I'd like more details. Did they really hack the phones? Or use the towers to call the phones with a message.

Hacking every cellphone sounds unrealistic.

Making a call to every phone connected to a tower sounds plausible.

Findecanor 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think it is more likely that the Israeli government would have abused Gaza's wireless emergency alert system to send a link to a live stream to every cell phone. AFAIK, emergency alert systems are limited to text messages but smartphones will recognise URLs to allow users to tap to open them.

But a user would have needed to actively tap on the link to open the stream.

	▲	lexarflash8g 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah my initial thought would be it sends something like a Amber alert with messages -- a bit stretch of the truth

▲

SPCECDET 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is it really unrealistic though? Considering Israeli Pegasus spyware alone? Honest question.

▲

tgsovlerkhgsel 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Kind of.

Not because it would be impossible, although the "every phone" is a bit of a stretch given how hard it would be to build an exploit that reliably works on all the messed up versions of Android that vendors put out.

But because if you had a capability like this, you wouldn't burn several full exploit chains just to broadcast a speech.

Doing something on the network side (either compromising existing infrastructure, simply being the infrastructure provider, or providing fake base stations) and then simply calling each phone - sure.

Pushing emergency alert cell broadcast messages with a link to the stream - sure.

Actually exploiting the phones? Nah.

	▲	tarwich 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This. How can you know you hacked EVERY phone. I have friends with flip phones (no screen). There must be at least a small amount of optimistic thinking here. IMHO someone was likely given a task such as "disseminate the message to 100% of the population" and they found a way to claim they accomplished the task (with reasonable credibility).

▲

bigyabai 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Pegasus is just the commercial stuff, too. The IDF certainly has it's own panoply of exploits/payloads in addition to their profoundly privileged CIA access.

▲

ranger_danger 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or possibly they hacked (or stole credentials for) the switch/tower gear in order to send those calls/messages.

	▲	pedalpete 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is more along the lines of what I was suggesting

▲

Theodores 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In the UK we recently had a test of the emergency alert system. Most people had an alarm and a message on screen, with phones locked. There were a few incidents of motorists ending up in road traffic accidents in the immediate aftermath, and some phones reportedly spoke the announcement rather than just beep loudly.

Since the 'beep' is just an audio file, my hunch is that some A/B testing was going on, with most people getting the 'beep' and some getting the message read out.

I imagine that broadcast capability is fully built in, so that mobile phones can replace what we had in the olden days when the government could take over the TV and radio to broadcast whatever they thought was important. I can't remember the last time that the U.S. President spoke to the people in this way, but it used to be fairly common.

I don't think that calling every phone is plausible. In a competitive telecoms market, no provider would build that out. Instead they would keep capacity just above what they know is needed on a daily basis.

	▲	g-b-r 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> some phones reportedly spoke the announcement rather than just beep loudly. Reportedly, some phones have a setting to toggle TTS for emergency alerts...