THE lethal hack of Hizbollah's Asian-branded pagers and walkie-talkies has sparked an intense search for the devices' path, revealing a murky market for older technologies where buyers may have few assurances about what they are getting.
While supply chains and distribution channels for higher-margin and newer products are tightly managed, that's not the case for older electronics from Asia where counterfeiting, surplus inventories and complex contract manufacturing deals can sometimes make it impossible to identify the source of a product, analysts and consultants say.
The response from the companies at the centre of the booby-trapped gadgets that killed 37 people and wounded about 3,000 in Lebanon last week has underlined difficulties in discerning how and when they were weaponised.
Taiwan-based Gold Apollo put the blame on a Europe-based licensee of its pager, sparking investigations in Hungary, Bulgaria, Norway and Romania into the origins of the deadly device.
Japan's Icom said it could not tell if the walkie-talkies bearing its name were real, in a market awash with fake products.
"If the supply chain was compromised to put explosives inside ... it's incredible engineering to do that. But the actual supply chain compromise is not that hard.
"Probably the easiest part was the supply chain compromise," said David Fincher, a China-based technologist and consultant.
He said counterfeit products are prevalent, especially in big manufacturing centres like China where fake components can be easily produced, adding that it isn't a big leap to go from fake components to supply chain compromise.
"As the technologist I am, I can tell you getting a little explosive in a radio is not that hard."
Hizbollah acquired the devices around five months ago, according to a security source, who added that the armed group thought it was buying the pagers from Gold Apollo.
The hand-held radios, which the source said were purchased around the same time as the pagers, had labels bearing the name of Osaka-based Icom and the phrase "Made in Japan", images of one exploded device showed.
Both companies have ruled out the possibility that any of the deadly components were made in factories in either of their home locations.
Taiwan's Economy Minister Kuo Jyh-huei has also said the components used in the pagers that detonated in Lebanon were not made in Taiwan.
A preliminary investigation by Lebanese authorities into the devices found that the explosives were implanted before they arrived in the country, according to a letter to the UN Security Council by Lebanon's mission to the United Nations.
But, for now, that's about all anyone is certain of. It's not clear how or when the pagers and walkie-talkies were weaponised so that they could be remotely detonated.
Joe Simone, partner with Chinese intellectual property firm East IP, said part of the problem is that smaller brands tend to invest less in policing counterfeits, due in large part to costs that could impact their profitability.
"Authorities are happy to deal with low-tech counterfeits but the IP owners need to monitor, investigate and file complaints and that doesn't always happen as much as it might for high-tech and bigger technology brands."
For Icom, one problem is that it stopped making the IC-V82 model in question a decade ago, around the time it started introducing holographic stickers as a protection against counterfeit products, the company said.
The company has long warned about imitation products, especially of its older models.
In fact, more than seven per cent of firms in Japan reported business losses from counterfeit products in 2020, according to the latest available report by the Japan Patent Office, with around a third of cases linked to China.
Icom has urged that customers only use its official distributor network to ensure they are buying genuine products.
But in China, there are dozens of shops selling Icom-branded walkie-talkies on e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba.com, Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo, including in some cases the IC-V82 model, according to Reuters checks.
Among three China-based vendors of Icom products on Alibaba.com, none of which were listed as official suppliers on Icom's website, Guangzhou Minxing Communications Equipment Co and Chengdu Bingxin Technology Co both said they sell authentic products, while Quanzhou Yitian Trading Co acknowledged selling "Chinese-made imitations" in addition to original products.
The writers are from Reuters
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times