Hacking every cellphone sounds unrealistic.
Making a call to every phone connected to a tower sounds plausible.
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.
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).
But a user would have needed to actively tap on the link to open the stream.
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.
Reportedly, some phones have a setting to toggle TTS for emergency alerts...
UK's emergency alert system [1] is based on SMS-CB [2] so it's just test based.
AP https://apnews.com/article/un-general-assembly-israel-netany...
NBC https://www.nbcnews.com/video/shorts/israel-pm-says-they-use... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45387273)
> The prime minister’s office also claimed that the Israeli army had taken over mobile phones in Gaza to broadcast his message, though AP journalists inside Gaza saw no immediate evidence of Netanyahu’s speech being broadcast on phones there.
Let's allow the ICC to decide that for us, with the wealth of available evidence at their disposal.
https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-pm-76a155d0-9b02-11f...
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-hit-by-teleco...
You guys read too much Tom Clancy.
If spammers can do it and send me links to phishing sites so can one of the most technologically-proficient governments. You really think they would waste multiple 0-days on some bullshit like this?
Isn't this is the nation that planted explosives into pagers? I think they're the ones reading too much Clancy.
> so can one of the most technologically-proficient governments.
How would you feel if China did this to your nation? Would you marvel at their proficiency or perhaps focus on the complete lack of diplomacy it displays?
How would you feel? Insulted?
So you're infantilizing an entire nation to make this point?
> So he should surrender and spare us the war.
Do you have any measure on this sentiment among the population currently? If it is, as it is in so many places, that the leaders actions are detached from the will of the voters, then what should we make of this?
Should they be allowed to surrender to a _neutral_ party?
Should they be allowed to keep their state?
Is there any reason not to presume a peaceful negotiation under these terms? Is there any reason to attempt to assassinate the party trying to coordinate this?
> How would you feel? Insulted?
Violated. These are _our_ emergency broadcast services. They should be used for the intended purpose and not to force an angry political message on a powerless population.
Do you not have any good faith in yourself for this topic?
Seymour Hersh, actually.
My understanding that it is a standard feature, this is how earthquake warning works in Japan.
Point being there is no "hacking" involved. Standard feature
1. israel cyberarmy is just better
2. they dont need to hide it anymore (where US and china do it may gain unnecessary publicity)
But it can copy the sound of a phone call to separate channels, or copy the data being sent (even on wifi), or it can activate emergency messages or broadcasts. It can also transmit audio and video when the phone is not actually in a call. That sort of thing.
In practice there are a great many different basebands and of course most states couldn't be bothered to actually write a decent system to use them (well, they tried forcing carriers to do it for them, but anyone who ever worked at a large carrier on a big project can tell you how that went), so only lowest common denominator features are in practice accessible. That means location and getting audio. But nothing is stopping countries from implementing more. I bet the NSA has something with a lot more features, for example.
No, the only part where carriers can run arbitrary code is on the sim card, which can only run javacard applets.
>It can also transmit audio and video when the phone is not actually in a call.
Source? AFAIK both iPhones and Pixels have discrete modems, which means the baseband is separated from the main processor and communicates with it via some sort of bus. It's unclear how the baseband would be able to get arbitrary audio/video when it's isolated in this manner.
This includes the power to upload code to decide which channels and timing to use.
Then it was decided to use this for law enforcement, and so audio was routed through the baseband. Other things were for carriers, like SMS management (including deleting SMS that were already shown to the user). Both to prevent apps from listening without the baseband's agreement AND to listen in without agreement from the apps.
The limit on this is that there's already many different basebands, and of course neither carriers nor states could be bothered to actually implement the backend necessary. I'd bet good money the NSA has one though.
Reminds me how at some point the U.S. was so strong that it didn’t even have to show up to dick swinging contests anymore. No military parades and the like, which feels antiquated and kind of embarrassing when you see the Russians or North Koreans doing it.
Though the Americans are into military parades again… hmmm…
Putin has treaty rights to attend the General Assembly, same as Netanyahu. Neither are under legal threat in the U.S. as we never signed the Rome Statute that established the ICC.
I don't see why Putin would be prohibited from making a speech in the time alloted for speeches either? He's the head of state of a member country as well. And it's one of the permanent members of the security council, so among equal peers, it's more equal. Russia's slot is currently listed as Saturday morning [1], I don't know who will speak.
[1] https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/us/2025/09/15/un-genera...
cluckindan•4mo ago
r00fus•4mo ago