The articles I read basically made that argument. The story isn’t bogus, it’s clickbait. They didn’t say it was being used to interrupt anything, they only said it could be used that way. And that’s true, it could be used to cause problems for international visitors.
It’s just clickbait, and not even the most egregious example.
“The correct quote from any expert is that this looks like a normal criminal SIM farm, that’s used for a wide range of purposes, often SMS spam. They are pretending to be thousands of normal mobile phone users to prevent the mobile phone companies from shutting them down. Some miscreant likely used the service to hide the origin of threats sent as SMS messages to politicians, which is why the Secret Service is involved. Theres no evidence the Secret Service is involved due to some actual national security or espionage threat — that’s just propaganda they are hyping.”
lol @ the thunbnail… GMO corn is getting crazy.
This Substack’s subdomain is blocked by my fake news filter so now I’m left wondering: who’s wrong?
Here’s a more even-handed take from Wired: http://archive.today/uwx3J
They suppose that scamming/spamming is the main purpose behind the SIM farm, rather than deliberately crashing the cell network.
The Wired story says the same thing but with more context and less “trust me, bro”.
They are both interesting reads.
Everything that dude says passes the sniff test: it seems like it could be explained as a run of the mill criminal spamming operation. The Secret Service story doesn’t offer evidence that there’s anyone extraordinary about it.
FWIW the dude also makes a number of unsupported statements that seem to be “trust me bro, I’m a hacker”. The statements aren’t outlandish, so maybe.
I think the mainstream news sources claiming this is some attack on the cellular networks and/or the UN are wrong for sure.
I’m not sure what he said but the headline makes it sound like the entire story (finding the equipment) is bogus.
The most telling detail is the least technical. Why include the distance to the UN when that number is 35 miles?
The alphabet-bois are at it again, this time spinning Romanian spam ops into an imaginary dos-by-texting ticking bomb. Same playbook - take normal criminal SIM farms used for warranty scam texts, add scary words about “nation-state actors,” time it with UN meetings, profit.
The dude in the article is masscan creator btw, you know, just the guy who invented the tools that actual security experts use. Meanwhile James Lewis gets quoted making technical claims that would embarrass a CS undergrad. Peak institutional credentialism - ignore the actual expert because he doesn’t have the right government consulting contracts. You can’t overload thousands of cell towers serving 10M+ people with SMS flooding. That’s not how cellular architecture works, Lewis!
Secret Service stumbled across Torswats operation leftovers and decided to manufacture national security theater instead of just saying “we busted some spam criminals”. The propaganda machine ate it up because anonymous officials “speaking on condition of anonymity” sounds so much more dramatic than “we found some bulk SMS servers.”
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱 Solid technical journalism cutting through institutional bullshit, Graham earned his reputation for a reason.
Surprise 🫢
