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Crypto currency? Seriously, that was their first thought? I find it hard to believe. It sounds like something a journalist would come up with to make a story mo

Crypto currency? Seriously, that was their first thought? I find it hard to believe. It sounds like something a journalist would come up with to make a story more interesting. Also, if the boxes have antennas, what length are they? If these are not normal mobile phone frequencies perhaps they should contact FCC and ask if there are call signs for base stations at those locations. Perhaps some ham wasn't aware it is not permitted to leave such things on public land? If not ham radio or other kind of tech enthusiast my first thoughts would be in order: - relays for connectivity of some devices located in valleys so they are out of reach of lte/GPRS, but a relay on a peak is. For example, are there problems with unauthorised growing of plants in those mountains? Maybe grow monitoring. - amateur weather monitoring/Ip cameras (they didn't say if the boxes were equipped with cameras - animal photo traps - some "prepper experiment" in building a mesh network In any case this was a really disappointing article... They took a device down, but they didn't report anything about its internals. Does it have any easily readable storage? Usb drives, SD cards? Are pcbs off the shelf or custom made? Perhaps firmware can be dumped and clues can be found this way. Or it can be plugged in the lab and whatever it transmits can be analysed. Etc.

zinekeller 4y ago
> Crypto currency? Seriously, that was their first thought? I find it hard to believe. It sounds like something a journalist would come up with to make a story more interesting. Uh, you assumed that it's the mainstream ones like Bitcoin or Ethereum but there is a reasonable suspicion that it's a Helium node (https://www.helium.com https://www.helium.com). According to what I've learned last year their shtick is that deploying on places that have less physical Helium nodes allows you to collect more HNT tokens which you can allegedly convert into cash while Helium will sell bandwidth à la Sigfox (https://www.sigfox.com/ https://www.sigfox.com/). In this particular case (unauthorized placement plus the particular spacing) this theory is more likely than an ADB-S collector (you only need a single unit to collect all data for miles) or privately-deployed seismographs.

zinekeller 4y ago

> Crypto currency? Seriously, that was their first thought? I find it hard to believe. It sounds like something a journalist would come up with to make a story more interesting. Uh, you assumed that it's the mainstream ones like Bitcoin or Ethereum but there is a reasonable suspicion that it's a Helium node (https://www.helium.com https://www.helium.com). According to what I've learned last year their shtick is that deploying on places that have less physical Helium nodes allows you to collect more HNT tokens which you can allegedly convert into cash while Helium will sell bandwidth à la Sigfox (https://www.sigfox.com/ https://www.sigfox.com/). In this particular case (unauthorized placement plus the particular spacing) this theory is more likely than an ADB-S collector (you only need a single unit to collect all data for miles) or privately-deployed seismographs.