Tbh, contraptions like this have a long history for gray-market VoIP call termination, but usually in countries where governments charge a lot for incoming international calls as means of fund-raising (or inefficient telecoms) but domestic rates are low.
Merge with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353925 ?
Praising the device and stating how cool it is? Highlighting how inexpensive it is? Screenshots of how it works? Saying where you can buy it from?
The line is blurry but this article has all of that. Here's to responsible journalism and being inundated with more spam on my phone so that a newsletter gets more clicks.
This problem isn't going to be solved by making information about the devices more obscure. It's going to be solved by technical preventions and legal action against the senders.
This explains using such a bank. You want to cover as many prefixes as possible and you can’t match area codes with traditional sms services.
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/erratarob.bsky.social [2] https://cybersect.substack.com/p/that-secret-service-sim-far...
I actually did see the tweet in full it turns out. It's just that there's not much content so i figured "oh it's one of those twitter thread chains i can't read".
Still not gonna help if you have cookies disabled because of the rate limiting, but hey.
SO much value in being able to root out garbage sales calls
Someone used an online SMS service to send threatening messages to a member of the Gleichschaltung squad, and the secret service traced the SIM card back to one of these rented apartments. The reason it was linked to a "Chinese state sponsored blah blah blah" is because most Chinese criminal operations in the US have some indirect benefit to the Chinese government, which is why they are allowed to operate.
You could use this hardware to launch some sort of a flooding attack, but given the density all you are going to knock out is the one cell site all your devices are talking to. If China wanted to knock out cell service around the UN they would use the hundreds of thousands of backdoored Android phones in New York to launch a more distributed attack.
Using the prices quoted in TFA they’re talking about $900,000 in servers and another $500,000 in SIM cards, before labor, rent and electricity.
Is that sort of outlay typical for phone scammers.
Also on a technical note is there an advantage to having all your sites in the NYC area? Is it simply that there’s enough cell traffic, the bad actors illicit traffic won’t stand out?
NYC is just high density, remember cell means cellular so the towers are configured for high traffic and more fall back, also being easy to go around in general, airports etc
Esims go for $5-10 a month. Hardware is less than 20k max. Apartment and general utilities are a sunk cost.
The secret service spun it as a terror threat in the same way your orthopedist tells you your teeth problem comes from bad posture.
I mean, the thing might be used to jam the networks (one would have to check that the devices still work when using all the antennas simultaneously), but that really sounds like an awful lot of effort for a disruption that’s neither guaranteed nor that distuptive. I mean, this would create some chaos for sure, but law enforcement and emergency services use radio to communicate. 99% of businessses use wired phones. So this would mostly affect what? deliveries?
A large scale spam operation is way more plaisible.
That the secret service is directly under Trump may also explain why they spun it as potential terrorism stuff. it’s part of their effort to make people believe that America is under terror threat, so that they can legitimize power grabbing…
I think this explains why the spam texts I receive never show up as an iMessage or rcs. This thing-a-ma-hugger doesn’t support it.
It is being pushed by the carriers because retail locations are their biggest overhead expense, for what is basically a place to go pick up a SIM card.
Was never much a fan of eSIMs, but after seeing them in action, I kinda like it. Saved me inconvenient trips and delay.
Yes, it’d be nice to just be able to move a sim from one device to the next. In practice, I’ve only done that a few times in the past 20 years, about as often as I switch carriers. So, kinda a wash.
Hoping if phone suddenly breaks, can get new eSIM as easily.
Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC (263 points, 251 comments)
it's been a few interesting couple months at work, as google being google there was never an announcement or anything.
it's mostly used to spam SMS and make fraud calls
“We need to do forensics on 100,000 cell phones, essentially all the phone calls, all the text messages, anything to do with communications, see where those numbers end up,” "You can’t text message, you can’t use your cell phone. And if you coupled that with some sort of other event associated with UNGA, you know, use your imagination there, it could be catastrophic to the city."
So until we do our jobs, imagine the worst case scenario. Thanks guys.
Could be rent US a number service, data roaming, VOIP or SMS termination, account registration (google, tiktok, whatsapp).
There are data roaming services that use 5G GSM modems to transfer the SIMs tower connection to pocket wifi devices for tourists who need data.
My machine was for...spamming text sms. We would put it on our vehicle and drive around the city to spam sms message.
We stop doing that now since it's not really effective anymore.
But our machine having same form factor does not mean they have same functionality.
They're not all going to be transmitting at the same time either.
leakycap•3h ago
Sad to see Mobile-X MVNO as the preferred SIM in the photos shown, but I wonder if an MVNO has local-level data to detect a situation like this when hundreds of phones are in one area and don't move. Postpaid carriers running their own network might easily connect the dots between SIM/accounts/phone towers... but the piggyback nature of MVNO network management probably makes even detecting this behavior even harder.
rr808•2h ago
leakycap•32m ago
If you use an Apple Watch cellular, Verizon's Visible seems to be the best price currently but sadly doesn't have a pay-for-use option.
mike_d•1h ago
MVNOs don't care because they collect the profit without having to deal with any of the network issues. The carriers in turn only care when it impacts performance for legitimate customers, as they also see a piece of the pie.
leakycap•33m ago
This is an excellent point
I assumed there would be anti-fraud measures blocking this kind of activity, but if this is a paying customer it isn't necessarily fraud/bad to the carrier or mvno