Device hijackings an explosion of risk for Asia’s electronics industry

First, regardless of how the devices were rigged and detonated, it is clear that what goes on in the Levant does not stay in just the Levant. The trail of both types of communication devices implicates manufacturers across Asia and Europe.

Of course, the interception and exploitation of hardware, firmware and software is a trade as old as espionage itself, and techniques have evolved alongside developments in digital technology. Intelligence agencies have secretly bought, operated and leveraged to their advantage the very companies that market so-called secure tools of communication to governments elsewhere.

But to commandeer communication instruments and repurpose them as improvised explosives, given the life and death consequences, is a completely different matter. For the complex network of unwitting suppliers, assemblers and distributors of these otherwise everyday devices, there are serious reputational, even legal, penalties of a different nature to now factor into their business risk management plans.