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.
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.