Visual composition by Jaimee Haddad (Photos/AFP).
BEIRUT — Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah warned his partisans of the risks associated with smartphones, calling them a "spy device that can be controlled" and asked people in southern Lebanon to "throw" them, during a speech given on Feb. 13.
These comments were made in response to Israeli strikes that targeted and killed Hezbollah and Hamas members in Lebanon during the last months. It is known that Israel leans heavily on its tech sector and uses certain intelligence strategies such as employing spies to locate targets and assassinate them.
The Israeli tech sector, which benefits from the expertise of cybersecurity companies, allows Israel to intercept telephone calls, monitor social networks, and deploy highly sophisticated drones to capture high-precision photos.
Considering how Nasrallah addressed the issue of cybersecurity in this speech, it seems the Israeli approach is causing frustration within Hezbollah leadership. "The smartphone in your hand is a device that can be controlled. I don't have one. It is a spy device! It hears everything you do and takes pictures of your location and your home ... Israel does not need more than that!" he said, speaking emphatically.
"So we ask our brothers in the South: get rid of your phones! Throw them away, bury them, put them in a metal box and get rid of them! They're dangerous!" Nasrallah exclaimed in the televised address.
Since Oct. 8, Hezbollah and the Israeli army have exchanged near-daily fire, following the launching of Israel's war on Gaza on Oct. 7. According to our count, 206 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in Lebanon and Syria during this time.
Amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, what are the risks inherent to the use of smartphones?
'Most dangerous device' in terms of spying
Contacted by L'Orient Today, cybersecurity consultant Roland Abi Najem acknowledged the risks that smartphones pose today, saying that the "mobile is the most dangerous device" in terms of spying.
"It is not only about monitoring phone calls, messages, and so on; your mobile smartphone is connected to the internet and has microphones which Israel can enable remotely to listen to all conversations and can also record everything happening through the mobile's camera," Abi Najem said.
Mohamad Najem, executive director of SMEX (a Lebanese NGO that advocates for human rights in digital spaces) told L'Orient Today that "cell phones are risky when they turn into a surveillance device."
With the development of artificial intelligence (AI), things became even more complicated. According to Abi Najem, Israel is taking information from people's cell phones and combining it with data collected from security cameras placed all over southern Lebanon with the help of AI. This enables them to "assassinate whoever they want."
Pegasus spyware
Both experts warned that the use of the Pegasus, a spyware developed by Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group, makes it difficult — if not impossible — to protect one's device.
The software is capable of accessing a phone's microphone, camera, and files. It was at the heart of a scandal revealed in 2021 by a consortium of international news organizations.
The Pegasus Project included 80 journalists from 10 different countries, coordinated by an NGO in Paris, with support from Amnesty International. Using advanced forensic testing on mobile phones, they were able to identify traces of the Pegasus spyware in order to understand the scope of its use.
The group of whistleblowers revealed that Pegasus was being used by dozens of states to spy on hundreds of people around the world, including journalists and politicians.
It is extremely difficult to protect a device against infiltration from Pegasus, which perhaps explains why Nasrallah's only solution to the problem was to ask people to toss their cell phones away.
Pegasus "can hack smartphones, even without any single mistake from the user," according to Abi Najem.
Users can still be hacked even if they do not click on suspicious links that they might receive. This is called the "zero-click attack, which means that the mobile will be compromised regardless," Abi Najem added.
The SMEX executive director warned that Pegasus has the capability to turn cell phones into surveillance devices. "Any device that is connected to the internet is not secured," Mohamad Najem said.
"We can't do much against Pegasus."
Unknown threats
Although nothing can be done to protect smartphones from Pegasus, people are encouraged to take some measures to limit the risk of other threats.
Most likely, Israel does not only use Pegasus for spying purposes. According to Mohamad Najem, the Israeli army is probably using other tools that we are unaware of.
Najem proposed some ideas that could alleviate these threats.
According to him, people should avoid downloading a lot of apps and use a web browser instead.
Moreover, people should always enable two-step verification which is an authentication method in which a person should present a minimum of two pieces of evidence in order to access an application.
Two step-verification, which can be enabled from a cell phone's settings, links an application to a phone number or an authenticator so that people rely on a second layer of authentication instead of only relying on a password, according to Najem.