Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday that it authorized its brand on the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria but that another company based in Budapest manufactured them.

The AR-924 pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, based in Hungary’s capital, according to a statement released Wednesday by Gold Apollo.

“According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” the statement read.

Gold Apollo chair Hsu Ching-kuang told journalists Wednesday that his company has had a licensing agreement with BAC for the past three years, but did not provide evidence of the contract.

Experts believe explosive material was put into the pagers prior to their delivery and use in a sophisticated supply chain infiltration. Media reports said that a tiny amount of explosives, one to two ounces, was implanted next to the battery in each pager together with a switch to be used to detonate the explosives remotely.

Two sources, including a senior Lebanese security source, told Reuters that the Mossad planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers months ago. Hezbollah ordered the pagers from Gold Apollo and they arrived in the country earlier this year.

“The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner,” the source said.

The AR-924 pager, advertised as being “rugged,” contains a rechargeable lithium battery, according to specifications once advertised on Gold Apollo’s website before it was apparently taken down Tuesday after the sabotage attack. It could receive texts of up to 100 characters.

Ynet quoted Oleg Brodet, from the Cyber Labs at Ben-Gurion University, as saying that the operation may have taken years to execute, noting the complexity of supply chain cyberattacks. “To send a ‘compromised’ device, changes must be made during manufacturing or shipping. We believe something similar happened here, where devices intended for the terrorist organization were altered,” he said.

Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Eyal Pinko told Ynet: “This isn’t science fiction. Many countries possess such capabilities. If we go back 14 years, there was a virus that targeted the Natanz nuclear facility, an operation attributed to Israel, which crippled Iran’s enrichment program.”

Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said from the beginning of 2022 until August 2024, Gold Apollo has exported 260,000 sets of pagers, including more than 40,000 sets between January and August of this year. The ministry said the pagers were exported mainly to European and American countries and that it had no records of direct exports of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon.

On February 14, Hezbollah leader Nassan Hasrallah ordered the terror group’s members to avoid using their cell phones after Israel carried out a series of targeted eliminations, killing 170 Hezbollah members, including a senior commander and a top Hamas official in Beirut.

Following the speech, pagers were distributed to all Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria.

“The phone that we have in our hands — I do not have a phone in my hand — is a listening device,” Nasrallah said in the speech.

“I tell you that the phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the agent. It is a deadly agent, not a simple one. It is a deadly agent that provides specific and accurate information. Therefore, this requires great seriousness when confronting it.”

Is Israel about to launch a ground operation in Lebanon?

Reuters quoted analysts as saying that they don’t view the daring operation as a signal that a ground war is imminent. Instead, it is simply a sign of how deeply Israeli intelligence services have penetrated Hezbollah.

“It demonstrates Israel’s ability to infiltrate its adversaries in a remarkably dramatic way,” said Paul Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the U.S. intelligence community, mainly at the CIA.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem & AP)