16 ms·

That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

1058 points by sixhobbits 1y ago

Previously: Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 - Sept 2025 (283 comments)

ChoGGi 1y ago
Ok, that's not the Sim Farm I expected.
JdeBP 1y ago
The https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 discussion has indeed raised all of the same points.
- dang 1y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 - Sept 2025 (283 comments) I'll put that link in the top text too.
- jandrese 1y ago
  Yeah, the majority of the people in the posts were also highly skeptical of the USSS press release. Some of the media outlets did skip over some of the more outlandish points from that press release, but none of them were willing to call the bullshit for what it was. There is always the slim chance that the USSS has some extra info they didn't release that made this more than just a SIM bank operator who had no KYC program. The somewhat annoying part is that it seems like it is pretty easy to spot these sorts of SIM farm setups and yet nobody in law enforcement seems to care enough to actually do it.
phh 1y ago
I'm curious why they are using actual modems rather than just doing it with VoWifi that merely requires a SIM card reader (pretty much just an UART)
- mrb 1y ago
  They do this so they are harder to track & block. If they were sending over Wifi then they have to hide the IP, so they have to use VPNs, which are often blocked, etc. But with their solution they have a standard SIM on the standard cellular network, so it's nearly indistinquishable from a regular cellphone.
- privatelypublic 1y ago
  Among other things... having hundreds of calls and texts onramping from the same IP would be a rather large red flag. I'm a little surprised that a behavioral analysis didn't flag these anyway. Probably did, just the networks don't care as long as they get their cut.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >having hundreds of calls and texts onramping from the same IP would be a rather large red flag. Use VPNs? Surely paying for some subscriptions at $3/month is cheaper than renting an apartment in manhattan?
    - ale42 1y ago
      You'd probably need thousands of residential IP addresses to pass under the radar with so many SIM cards.
      - preisschild 1y ago
        There are bot nets that specifically offer such services
        asah 1y ago
        ...and perfectly legal services too, e.g. joinmassive.com, brightdata, etc. (they're used for gathering listing data from e-commerce sites, job boards, etc.) disclosure: I'm an investor/advisor in massive.
immibis 1y ago
First thing I thought when reading it. This story makes no sense. Nothing they mentioned in the article is actually illegal. Having lots of phones (even in a rack-mount form factor) isn't illegal. Even if the phone network could conceivably be DoSed with that many phones all calling at once, it's not illegal unless you actually do that or intend to do it. And their other justification was that this equipment could be used to send anonymous or encrypted communications - that's not illegal either. Even this government hasn't gotten to the point of making encryption illegal.
- chinathrow 1y ago
  > Nothing they mentioned in the article is actually illegal. What about sending spam and threaths over one of these SIMs? I'm pretty sure that warrants legal action.
  - dboreham 1y ago
    Spam is illegal? I'd love that to be true but I don't see any spam police under the current administration (who are prolific...spamers).
  - rs186 1y ago
    Have we actually established that they are used for sending spam? It's very likely, but the press release does not provide any evidence of that. All we know is that they could be used for spam.
    - immibis 1y ago
      And even if they are, if you provide a service and someone uses your service to send spam, that's not valid grounds for seizing all your equipment.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  << First thing I thought when reading it. This story makes no sense. Nothing they mentioned in the article is actually illegal. A lot of things are not, but US for a while has been on a path that suggests that whether something is legal or not is not the standard. The standard is basically, based partially on personal vibes. Naturally, this comes years after it was normalized in banking, red flag laws and so on, so I suppose this is not a surprise, but I am surprised that people are making 'this is not illegal argument'. In this setup, illegal does not matter. If it is suspicious, you are in trouble. For example, I invite you to look at DHS/FBI 'signs'[1][2] to report by private orgs: - Producing or sharing music, videos, memes, or other media that could reflect justification for violent extremist beliefs or activities Note the could and despair at the future we are gleefully approaching. Anyway, I don't disagree with you on principle, but I want you to understand that the system behaves differently these days. https://tripwire.dhs.gov/documents/us-violent-extremist-mobilization-indicators-2021-edition https://tripwire.dhs.gov/documents/us-violent-extremist-mobi... https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/counterterrorism/us-violent-extremism-mobilization-indicators-tech-sector.pdf/view https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/counterterrorism/us-viol...
hdjdndndba 1y ago
What's with substackers these days putting hideous ai images on every other article?
ale42 1y ago
Great to see that I'm not the only one thinking that the espionage story is totally bogus.
PLenz 1y ago
I mean yeah, it was kinda obvious that they busted an ad fraud sim farm but needed to pad that resume for the bosses. There's no glory in "just" fighting fraud right now.
- JdeBP 1y ago
  Ironically, the Secret Service's PR people missed a trick with the press release. They could have painted this in a way that strongly resonated with people. Just tell people that this is the sort of setup that is used by (overseas) scammers to send messages to thousands of potential victims at a time to rope them into various scams. Fighting scammers is a hugely popular thing with the general public. No need to dress it up with that U.N. nonsense to get the general public's approval. People wouldn't even have minded that the Secret Service ended up uncovering a scammer support operation whilst tracking down something else.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    But what if they are currying favor from the administration, not the public? The POTUS had some embarrasing speech in the UN and now various Republicans call for airstrikes on the UN.
  - nixosbestos 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - WmWsjA6B29B4nfk 1y ago
    Is it within their jurisdiction though? "National security threat targeting foreign leaders and the UN" clearly is, but just fighting scammers and fraud is local LEA or FBI job
    - ryoshu 1y ago
      Possibly https://www.secretservice.gov/investigations/cyber https://www.secretservice.gov/investigations/cyber
    - 1y ago
choutos 1y ago
First thing that came to my mind was SimFarm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimFarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimFarm). And I was really confused.
- shaunpud 1y ago
  Reticulating splines
bilekas 1y ago
> That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable. Yeah makes a lot of sense when framed like this, the timing of the secret service of all people busting this 'huge' operation was far too suspicious.
- mcintyre1994 1y ago
  Also seems to be the first time NYT has used that form of words according to Google `site:nytimes.com “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”` has no earlier results Other outlets have used “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation” before though.
  - Brendinooo 1y ago
    `site:nytimes.com “anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation"` shows more than one hit.
  - WastedCucumber 1y ago
    Just in a cursory check into some of the other articles using the phrase, it seems like they're mostly cases where an investigator might encounter retaliation for speaking out. It's hard to imagine that happening for the present example.
    - eagleal 1y ago
      Usually it's not allowed for people involved in an ongoing investigation to talk about said investigation. Maybe the US is different.
  - sixhobbits 1y ago
    That's a long enough phrase to be unique. Journalists often agree to speak to all kinds of sources "on condition of anonymity". Even if you just don't want to be sued by your employer you might not be comfortable being named. Overall I found the substack author to tell a good story and speak with what seems to be relevant technical experience so I reposted the link that I saw in another hn thread as a separate story, but as other commentors have pointed out it's possible that both he and the original journalist are hyping up conspiracies in both directions (compromised press vs state actor hackers) and actually the truth is often a more boring mid ground (Journalists hyping up stories and shady people doing shady things)
hk1337 1y ago
Both scenarios could be right? It could be just a scam bot farm but a scam bot farm with the intention of targeting vulnerable UN delegates with scams not necessarily to disrupt any cell tower?
- robomc 1y ago
  You're right, it could be the sensible most likely thing AND the far-fetched thing.
  - alansammarone 1y ago
    You're assuming the conclusion in order to argue against it. It's slightly surprising to me that this is not obvious and actually, pretty common. You can't argue against X ("It isn't completely obvious that is bogus") by assuming X ("far-fetched thing"). I don't mean this in derogatory sense. I wasslightly...hm...confused when reading this. When I see something in the news, to the degree that I trust the source, I see it only as a statement of fact, and unless I trust the commentator, I ignore the comment. I only expect descriptive accuracy from the news. This sometimes requires resources that individuals don't generally have. When I read a personal blog article articulating a personal opinion, presenting evidence and trying to make a case for their conclusion, I usually apply a different standard. From them, I expect sound reasoning, which often requires a form of independence/neutrality that news organizations don't have. And I can't say that this article is structured as a sequence of QEDs, so to speak. It doesn't seem like the conclusions follow from the premisses. That's not to say is wrong, just that if it is right, it would be in part by accident.
    - lazide 1y ago
      Is this a bot? This reply has been essentially pasted into several places now in this article.
      - alansammarone 1y ago
        No, I'm not a bot, I just wanted it have it as reply to the article itself too, separate from this reply. It has been pasted exactly once and edited accordingly. Also, my account is 15 years old :)
nikcub 1y ago
Paying for residential / mobile proxy[0] traffic for scraping is becoming more common - this is what I always imagined the other end of the mobile part looked like. [0] https://oxylabs.io/products/mobile-proxies https://oxylabs.io/products/mobile-proxies
- ghxst 1y ago
  The hardware in the pictures of the NYT article don't resemble what I am familiar with when it comes to mobile data farming, they look like traditional sim equipment for texting.
- lxgr 1y ago
  Wow, I knew there were residential proxies for sale (for bypassing geofenced VOD content etc.), but I didn't know that was a thing for mobile data yet. Is it time to stop treating somebody's IP address as an authentication factor yet?
  - singpolyma3 1y ago
    That time was always
    - lxgr 1y ago
      You know that, I know that, but the only thing that matters is decision makers at big corporations also knowing it.
bArray 1y ago
If the objective is to knock out cell towers, just jam them. It's clearly a SIM farm for middle-man communications. It just happened to be close to where the UN were.
- cenamus 1y ago
  Close being 35km.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    I think it's 35 miles (X 1.6).
    - boringg 1y ago
      So anywhere in NYC but it must be targeting the UN /s. Also funny was that it was considered espionage at first ... but they found lots of drugs on site -- clearly not espionage.
      - jandrese 1y ago
        They found 50g of cocaine, which is more than a personal (not Scarface) use amount of cocaine, but more on the scale of a single dealer. Like the guy running the sim farm was also selling coke on the side.
    - marcosdumay 1y ago
      Also "most of them" within 35 miles (~50 km).
  - nelox 1y ago
    The World Trade Center is/was closer to UNHQ ;) Edit:ascii emoji fail
  - lovich 1y ago
    It's super weird how unusual activity done by humans is correlated with dense human population centers. I cannot conceive of a reason why that would occur https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
fidotron 1y ago
It's actually a combination of warning and bait, and it's not the first story like that nor will it be the last. Picking at the details of it misses the point. The real question here is who and what it was intended to warn off, and you'll never get a real answer to that.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  The answer to that may be “no one”. The more likely scenario is they exaggerated a mundane crime into an exciting one.
  - fidotron 1y ago
    They have all year to do that. The giveaway there is something odd about this is the timing.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      The timing is the President went to the UN and this makes leadership look like they stopped a big threat for some attaboys.
- dzdt 1y ago
  You make it sound like there must be a real high-Level strategic reason behind this. More likely it’s just a low level face-saving exercise. Someone probably spent 10s of millions of Secret Service budget chasing some threatening text messages sent to government officials, and in the end what they have to show for it is taking down a $1 million spam operation. So they hype it as a cyber-espionage threat anyway to make themselves look good.
  - op00to 1y ago
    You have a mind for government work!
- pessimizer 1y ago
  > Picking at the details of it misses the point. I ask god to make the people I bullshit all agree with you about this. Please don't pay attention to the details; in fact, they were probably placed there by our enemies to distract us from the story (that I told you.) In fact, you're a genius, and this goes deeper than even I thought. I'm going to need access to your bank account.
stefan_ 1y ago
You know I dont really care to "set the story straight" on lowlifes with a million modems for scams or spam or what other possible activities these were up to that are a guaranteed net negative to this world.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  No one’s suggesting giving their stuff back. The Secret Service bullshitting the public is still an issue.
  - lyu07282 1y ago
    The media is also to blame by just taking their press release at face value and just parroting them, zero research and critical thinking at all. If law enforcement knew the press would critically report, they wouldn't bullshit us nearly as much.
ilyazub 1y ago
Wow, government-led mobile proxy network. Did they attempt to build a search index? :-)
SilverBirch 1y ago
>Who are you going to trust, these Washington insiders, “people who matter”, or an actual hacker like myself? To be honest, with the contents of the post, probably neither. It's fine if you want to point at different sources and go "ooooh WEF" and make scare quotes with your hands, but that's not actually evidence it's just a description of your existing bias. Frankly, the overstating of the threat in the original article is frankly about as bad as the overstating of the article being bogus. The feds shut down some sim farm. Is is a massive national security threat? Probably no, that's a bit of an overstatement. The NYTimes ran a clickbaity article, is it bogus? Probably no, that's a bit of an overstatement. I don't understand why people like this get so wound up by the way places like the NYTimes write up articles. This is the way journalism is written, you don't write articles that say "X happened, but it's probably fine!". You write "X happened, and it could have Y impact!". People are smart enough to read the article and understand, we don't need you making baseless accusations about their sourcing.
- alansammarone 1y ago
  Exactly! Thank you! :) I believe we're making very similar points in essence - see my other reply. Personally, I'd say that foreign security services having some involvement in this is slightly more plausible. If nothing else, just because some are basically nation-wide gang states, which very well could be doing this just for monetary reasons. Seems a bit more likely, not much, than a fed agency trying to do something (unclear what the author claim is about the point of the lie - "hype it up", I guess), concluding that lying about what they know in a case is a good way to do it, and choosing this case and this particular lie.
alansammarone 1y ago
I felt slightly...hm...confused when reading this. When I see something in the news, to the degree that I trust the source, I see it only as a statement of fact, and unless I trust the commentator, I ignore the comment. I only expect descriptive accuracy from the news. This sometimes requires resources that individuals don't generally have. When I read a personal blog article articulating a personal opinion, presenting evidence and trying to make a case for their conclusion, I usually apply a different standard. From them, I expect sound reasoning, which often requires a form of independence/neutrality that news organizations don't have. And let's just say this article is not exactly structured as a sequence of QEDs, so to speak. It doesn't seem like the conclusions follow from the premisses. That's not to say it's wrong, just that if it is right, it would be in part by accident.
- nixosbestos 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - alansammarone 1y ago
    ...more like an ELI5? Sure. When Bobby tries to convince his friend Jimmy that Charlie is lying, you shouldn't trust him if he says that "I know that Charlie is lying because apples are green". > One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.
    - Brendinooo 1y ago
      >That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. I'm not even sure the apple is green! If you search `site:nytimes.com “anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation"` you'll see that this news outlet has done this multiple times in the past. I suppose "valid" and "normal" are giving the author a bunch of wiggle room here, but he never backs this claim up.
mcintyre1994 1y ago
If it is PR then it seems a bit odd. I suspect most people would care way more about them busting an SMS spam farm than protecting the communications of people at the UN. Maybe it has a specific intended audience, but protecting a UN meeting they're hosting is kinda assumed so I'm not sure who would give them much credit here.
- bunnie 1y ago
  Maybe building a case to send military assets into New York? Breaking up an alleged international spy ring threatening diplomatic meetings could be grounds to deploy types of forces not normally allowed otherwise...
Havoc 1y ago
Interesting. When I read the story I was wondering how banks of sims allow for eavesdropping
billy99k 1y ago
[flagged]
- Spooky23 1y ago
  Was it? What does “near the UN” really mean? My guess is they did some sort of sweep in advance of the president’s visit and the secret service decided, probably rashly, to do something about it instead of ignore it. The NY Post, dipshits that they are, broke the story and were the headliner on Drudge Report. They spun/blew up the story as being potentially the biggest telecom disruption since 9/11. Bullshit experts weighed in that only the Chinese, Russians or Israelis could possibly buy SIM cards. That’s how you know it’s bullshit, as outcomes of counterintelligence investigations that make the security services look dumb don’t get headline billing. The other news outlets went with a slightly less unhinged variant of the story.
- michaelbuckbee 1y ago
  The author is describing the typical pattern of these things (SIM farms, email spam hosts, Proxy Networks, etc.) which don't typically get VC money or large investments, but grow organically.
- JdeBP 1y ago
  It's not actually a contrarian view. Hacker News, the comments section of The Register, and other places where one might expect a larger proportion of the readership to know how telecommunications actually works, are all covering these same points. The involvement of the politicians was someone that was using this kit almost certainly for some minor side-line, as one does not need expensive kit capable of transmitting thousands of simultaneous messages from sites in three states in order to send hoax police reports. Indeed, the people whose operations (most probably high volume scamming, or some kind of dodgy telecommunications carrier) were primarily the purpose of this kit are probably rather cross with whoever it was who saw this kit as an opportunity for pursuing their own ends. It's the old found-major-criminal-through-a-broken-tail-light story.
giantg2 1y ago
The story isn't bogus, it's just blown out of proportion. That's unfortunately how most news articles work, especially ones related to crime. The ironic part is that this article is just as much "bogus" with the assumptions it's making.
- testfrequency 1y ago
  The story is bogus, the evidence isn’t*
  - giantg2 1y ago
    By that measure, all stories are bogus. Even things like how a story is framed (NLP scoring for positive vs negative sentiment) would be a made up part of the story since the evidence and facts reported typically do not provide explicit evidence for whether an event should be viewed and positive or negative. This sentiment is created and added by the reporter.
- kuschkufan 1y ago
  If the story is espionage, but it isn't actually espionage then the story is bogus, flimflam, propaganda. Made to make you believe, i mean look, we asked all these experts too. And you are not an expert on this, so better believe us.
  - iszomer 1y ago
    I thought the point of espionage is complete plausible deniability. For all you know it could be part of a bigger (psy)op to see what "lights up" when people go about sharing analyzing, critiquing this _news_..
    - kuschkufan 1y ago
      there is literally no point discussing further here. you've made up your mind already and will defend that no matter what.
raverbashing 1y ago
> Technically, it may even be legitimate enterprise, being simply a gateway between a legitimate VoIP provider and the mobile phone network. No. This is not how any of this works Just use SIP?
- kotaKat 1y ago
  Yes, that’s how this works, and it uses SIP. The boxes all basically turn the cell lines into SIP trunks, then they’re used for grey routes for international VoIP providers to dodge termination fees into the target country and get cheaper per-minute rates, because the game of pennies really adds up in telecoms traffic.
  - raverbashing 1y ago
    Ah I see, "grey routes" makes more sense
metalman 1y ago
sim farms are also used for certain types of seo optimisation and generating organic traffic and is a systematic way of generating infuence, much the same as the ways publication mentioned does it
rob_c 1y ago
"an actual jacket like myself"... That's _sigh_ you're doing the thing that you're ranting at the agency for doing. At best you'd be an experienced pen tester in the tech industry, which is still good. Don't try to pretend you're living in a Hollywood drama. We get it you have some political bent and don't like those in charge, but given the professionalism of the setup you don't know how quickly it was setup. If the place was rented last month that _is_ a $1M investment all up front. If it's over time it's still a professional setup all the same by people looking to abuse the system in some way or other for profit. I.e. unknown threat actor until proved proven otherwise. Honestly picking at a public body bigging up the work they do for the public isn't worth a rant. If this was close enough to the UN buildings and Embassy's to cause a problem then yes. That becomes an international issue. Do you honestly think if this was just a scam farm they wouldn't take money from someone else to burn the thing and turn the city into a circus? Besides if this was an agency with tech skill but limited funding, like a certain northern province in Asia, they'd bankroll it by scamming to start anyway wouldn't they.
topspin 1y ago
So if some rando were to just find one of these huge SIM farms, who could they call, and would anything be done? With the number of radios seen in the photos from the original story, there must have been a great deal of SMS from that structure. That is very easy to spot with low cost equipment: a TinySA[1] and a directional antenna should be sufficient. Hams do "fox hunting" with similarly basic equipment. Given the resources of cell operators, the most charitable explanation for how something like this can exist for more than a brief interval is total indifference. [1] The more recent versions ($150+) are pretty powerful and can see all 4G/5G bands.
- lxgr 1y ago
  > Given the resources of cell operators, the most charitable explanation for how something like this can exist for more than a brief interval is total indifference. And why should they care? A paying customer is a paying customer, never mind the health and integrity of the public phone network (which coincidentally also serves as the primary identification and authentication method for ~everybody in the US).
  - acdha 1y ago
    These are by and large the same companies who created the caller ID forgery problem to save money when deploying VoIP around the turn of the century. Everyone technical knew that was a bad design but the executives were thinking exactly how you described it, collecting payments for all of that extra traffic until legislation became a risk.
    - lxgr 1y ago
      Was there any specific bad design? As far as I understand it, it's more of the lack of a design (for authentication) that got us into all that trouble, similar to BGP, Email, and many other protocols that were originally designed with trusted counterparties in mind. It just so happened that the illusion of mutual trust broke down earlier in the Internet than it did in the international phone network. (Some even still believe in it to this day!)
roody15 1y ago
Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I tend to agree with student, NYT and major news outlets are clearly used for propaganda and if you sit back and look at it from perhaps another angle it makes sense , why wouldn’t a world super power with a massive government apparatus use media to influence and control citizen behavior? So yes the anonymous experts, the anonymous intelligence experts, the experts on CNN panels .. etc etc. It’s the government pushing a narrative for a purpose. My two cents live your life and spend your precious emotional energy for the people you care about around you. Do things in your local community and help when and where you can.
- alansammarone 1y ago
  While I think I agree with most of what you're saying, I think it can be misunderstood and it can be very damaging when taken to an extreme, so I'll just leave a quote from the absolutely fantastic 20 lessons from the 20th century by Timothy Snyder: > Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
  - ynniv 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - runlaszlorun 1y ago
      Unless you get your eyes open to Intuitionist Math and then you realize math isn't "true". Then again... where in the trillion or so parameters of any LLM is The Law of the Excluded Middle that classical math requires to be "true". Even more comical is that there are certainly embeddings in there _about_ an excluded middle. With thousands of dimensions and billions of values in each one. Lord help us all... Lol
numpad0 1y ago
This is odd, considering Stingray type devices in back of rideshares targeting phones by IMEI in developed countries is definitely real. But this article doesn't sound bogus, either. One plausible theory is that it was a closest plausible scapegoat that the authority could find, which isn't confidence inspiring.
t1234s 1y ago
I thought it looked suspicious how neat the cabling was done and cables taped down to the floor to prevent tripping hazards. This would most likely not be the case for a one-time event.
- mmcwilliams 1y ago
  Why not? That's the standard on film shoots in locations that are absolutely "one-time events". People do that all the time.
  - t1234s 1y ago
    Criminals don't file for workman's comp.
    - mmcwilliams 1y ago
      They don't like tripping over their own gear, either.
      - a96 1y ago
        They also aren't known for having high levels of common sense in general, but I would also kind of expect anyone willing to work with this amount of equipment would think about cable management at least a bit.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    Unless you're claiming this was pulled off by a pro film crew, that point is irrelevant. My computer setup is far from a one-time event, and my cabling is a nightmare.
    - mmcwilliams 1y ago
      The point that people tape off cables to prevent tripping over them is irrelevant? Not sure that's the case. Just because you don't care about cabling doesn't mean everyone else doesn't. I've watched network engineers do marvelous work on short order.
rs186 1y ago
One comment I saw elsewhere: why didn't we see an announcement of an arrest by FBI at the same time this story came out? Now I know why.
sidewndr46 1y ago
Why spend the effort to refute this? No one who is going to believe the original story is going to believe this.
- jsw97 1y ago
  I believed the original story. Now I don’t. So it helped me.
  - criddell 1y ago
    It will never happen, but I'd love to see the NYT follow up their story and pit some of what Graham says against their cadre of experts and see what parts of the story they agree on and which ones they don't. I would think the people at the Times would want to know if they are just being useful idiots here.
    - nailer 1y ago
      Last time the NYT needed to correct a major story (the 'starving children in Gaza' turned out to be a boy with a genetic abnormality) they issued their correction on the '@nytimespr' X account. https://x.com/NYTimesPR/status/1950311365756817690 https://x.com/NYTimesPR/status/1950311365756817690
caseysoftware 1y ago
> One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. Yes, we should be skeptical of anything that is entirely sources from anonymous sources.. even if they align with what we want to believe. And further, I'd love to see reporters start burning sources that lie to them. After all, the source is risking/destroying the reporter's credibility along the way. Unfortunately, we'll never see that as it's all an access game.
duxup 1y ago
I'm inclined to agree with the premise of the article. There's no reason your super evil plan to knock out cell service couldn't just sit hidden. Rather this just seems like a criminal scam setup that got caught.
gootz 1y ago
So, I should get fewer texts from random numbers asking 'hi, wanna grab coffee? I'm definitely not here to steal your kidney' /s
2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
Everyone is debunking a claim that wasn't made. > The Secret Service dismantled a network of more than 300 SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards in the New York-area that were capable of crippling telecom systems and carrying out anonymous telephonic attacks, disrupting the threat before world leaders arrived for the UN General Assembly > that were capable of They didn't say this is what it was used for but that it was capable of doing so. Are we sure that's false? It sounds correct that the equipment is capable of such things.
- boston_clone 1y ago
  It's an unnecessary claim to be made that only serves to promote FUD, which is why a lot of rationalists are debunking it. That's like saying "during an arrest a car was impounded - this vehicle has the capability to plow into a school and harm children". Like yeah sure the capability is there, but without evidence of intention, why say it?
sbarre 1y ago
This whole thing reminds me of the 90s when the government would bust some 16 year old hacker kid in his suburban bedroom who was abusing a PBX, and then parade him around like they'd arrested Lex Luthor (the cartoon villain, not the actual hacker) and prevented a global crisis.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  "We just arrested this drug pusher. One of our brave officers got a 0.001 milligram piece of fentynal on his sleeve, but fortunately after being rushed to the Emergency Room we were able to save his life. "The other 0.003 mg were lost while trying to get them in the evidence bag."
  - Terr_ 1y ago
    Yeah, there are some ridiculous theatrics going on. > First responders who believe they are overdosing on fentanyl from simply touching it in fact exhibit the exact opposite of the symptoms we would expect. While fentanyl makes you euphoric and slows down your breathing, cops start breathing faster, sweat a lot, and become anxious. “I don’t want to discredit anyone or say they’re faking,” says Dr. Marino. “I do think people are having a true medical emergency when this happens. The symptoms seem most consistent with a panic attack or anxiety or a fear reaction.” > Some will claim they had to administer naloxone (trade name Narcan), which can reverse an opioid overdose, in order to save their life. But if you are conscious enough to self-administer naloxone, you’re not overdosing on opioids. You would have lost consciousness and barely been breathing. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/you-wont-die-touching-fentanyl https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/...
- mewse-hn 1y ago
  I forget what originally opened my eyes to the theatrics of a typical perp walk (probably Grisham) - the cops tip off the reporters, the reporters get their content for the nightly news, the cops use the front door of the station rather than using the parking garage entrance like normal. It's a bizarro red carpet event.
- 1y ago
dumbfounder 1y ago
Seems like it would be easy for phone companies to locate SIM farms, no? They can triangulate based on the zillion texts coming from one location?
mcswell 1y ago
Speaking to the Secret Service agent who found this: "These aren't the SIMs you're looking for."
krunger 1y ago
And china writes a blog entry on substack. And now hacker news and ycombinator are on the Chinese side of things, along with their bots. Downvoting and shadow banning. What else is new?
aedocw 1y ago
There is a lawyer (Alec Karakatsanis) who has been writing about police driven propaganda for years. His recent book "Copaganda" is fantastic. He carefully breaks down how major papers (NYT is chief among them) create stories that fit a narrative by using very one-sided sources. Like an article on crime written in bad faith where the only people quotes are police, police consultants, and ex-police. It's a really good book, I wish more people were aware of it and read it.
- louwrentius 1y ago
  Copaganda is indeed a good book, recommend.
- AdamN 1y ago
  Didn't read the book but I think it's more insidious than what you wrote. The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. In the end if a journalist can get their story out faster by leaning on a few 'trusted sources' and then move onto the next article, most of them will and their managers will encourage it. Maybe you'll get a more in depth story if it makes it to On The Media a week or two later but that's basically all we have at this point which is very sad.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. No, they know what they are doing and you can tell they know what they are doing by the careful way language is used differently for similar facts when the police or other favored entities are involved vs. other entities in similar factual circumstances (particularly, the use of constructions which separates responsibility for an adverse result from the actor, which is overwhelmingly used in US media when police are the actors—and also, when organs of the Israeli state are—but not for most other violent actors.) This is frequently described as “the exonerative mood” (or, sometimes, “the exonerative tense”, though it is not really a verb tense.) Carefully calibrated, highly-selective use of (often, quite awkward) linguistic constructs does not happen unconsciously, it is a deliberate, knowing choice.
BillTthree 1y ago
Does anyone know what crime is being investigated? It looks like the malicious activity was sending spam text messages and forwarding international phone calls. Is there a federal regulation against sending spam messages? Is it somehow illegal to have many sim cards in the same place as having many radios? The telco's are also capable of bringing down the network, and they are legally allowed to turn their services off. Its not government infrastructure, its a business. If the backbone ISP providers decided to turn off their services for an area for a time, thats fine, there are contractual provisions to deal with that. its not a crime. There has been no mention of arrest, was this 'crime' perpetrated by the infamous hackerman in ablack hoodie?
- pstation 1y ago
  In other countries these setups are fairly illegal because it bypasses the international call tariffs that the typically state owned telco company would be entitled to. A local domestic call might cost $.01 per minute and an international call $.20. They call it "bypass fraud". But in the US, I'm not so sure since things are already deregulated.
  - toast0 1y ago
    US doesn't really have bypass fraud as a category, no; there's no real pricing difference based on the source of a call. Inbound international calls don't have to pay extra termination costs vs domestic calls and outbound international calls aren't paying much more than the cost of a local call + whatever the foreign carrier charges for termination. If you were doing bypass fraud in another country for calls to/from the US, you don't need SIM farms in the US, because you could just get a SIP account. These boxes would be used for pricing arbitrage where a mobile phone user can get 'unlimited' calling or messaging but a bulk messaging/calling customer would have to pay something per message or minute, or to avoid customer identification or restrictions on message that would happen with a bulk account.
throwaway150919 1y ago
[flagged]
nailer 1y ago
> using radio “triangulation” (sic) Why is triangulation an error?
- Empact 1y ago
  It's literally not, which casts the rest of the author's conclusions into doubt.
  - nailer 1y ago
    Ah. I thought they meant that 'triangulation' was a spelling mistake. Like: > The share price of Maple Leaf Gardens, which owns the Toronto Maple Leafs (sic) hockey team...
pkphilip 1y ago
Reminds me of the time when I consulted with a very large newspaper chain in the US which owned a lot of papers - both left leaning and right leaning. we used to get feeds from all of the usual sources. But the news articles themselves were "massaged" in various ways by some of the same editorial teams to suit the left-leaning or the right-leaning newspapers. The idea that completely different spin can be put to the same news - and by the same editorial teams, was a big eye opener for me. What this taught me is that the media's primary role is to polarise people to either the left or the right so that they can be herded to vote along or act along prescribed lines. What the media and the establishment hates are people who are not either left or right leaning and who are capable of picking and choosing the narrative depending on what makes the most sense - that is, the so called centrists. But here we are more than 2 decades later from that time and I see that the spin doctors are busier than ever and the "centrists" have almost completely disappeared.
- klysm 1y ago
  I think this is a consequence of our plurality voting system and the resulting game theory. Polarization is the most effective strategy, and it also has a bunch of other knock on effects that benefit the people in power.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  >What this taught me is that the media's primary role is to polarise people to either the left or the right so that they can be herded to vote along or act along prescribed lines. It has nothing to do with voting or acting. It has everything to do with locking in another consistent reader (aka "ad viewer"). If you can get someone ideologically driven, they become hooked, and you can stroke their ego by feeding them confirmation bias news. It becomes addictive, where the person gets hooked on news that tells them they are right. All of that just to get them to scroll past or listen to ads multiple times a day. I genuinely believe if we could scooby-do style pull off the mask of who is destroying the country, it would be the media. I have seen too many people in my life (and seemingly everyone online) go off the ideological deep-end because they fell into the media's ad-farming psy-op game.
  - 1y ago
gaoshan 1y ago
There is so much to address in this post but I want to look at just this part: "One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable." It is not accurate to claim "that's not a thing". Citing anonymous sources is a long established practice (in particular when it comes to law enforcement activities or potentially sensitive political reporting). The NYT has formal editorial standards around the identity of anonymous sources that require editors to assess the justification for applying it. It doesn't mean the information is reliable, that's where an editorial eye comes into play, but it does fall under the category of normal journalistic practice. Next the "Washington Game": there’s a grain of truth here, but it is overstated. Yes, leaks can be part of a strategic move by politicians and it can be a source of exploitation by political operators but to equate all anonymous sourcing with propaganda is misleading. Plenty of such reporting has resulted in significant truths being revealed and powerful people being held accountable (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib). Responsible reporting involves weighing a source's motivations as well as corroborating and contextualizing that information as accurately and truthfully as possible. The author's dismissiveness oversimplifies (or mischaracterizes, if I am being less generous) the reason and function of anonymity here. They overstate the issue with propaganda and anonymous sources. Accurate in the sense that anonymity can enable propaganda (it has happened), it is inaccurate in its absolutism. I feel like this sort of tone, with the absolutism, the attempt to reduce the complexity and nuance of reporting to the point where it can be dismissed is pretty typical of what passes for commentary in today's blog/tweet/commentary culture but it really plays more into the hands of those that would sow confusion and mistrust than it does into that of the truth and accuracy.
- glenstein 1y ago
  One of the more sober assessments in this entire thread, and closely aligned with how I experienced it. It's not nothing to stress the fact that it was pretty far away from the UN and that it's not obvious why a case of SIM cards would enable surveillance (seems more like it would anonymize an individual bad actor). But a large part of this is completely unsubstantiated speculation that people are nodding along with, which, in my opinion, is showing a breakdown in the ability to comprehend logical or evidence-based arguments.
throwmeaway222 1y ago
Can we perma-block nytimes since we discovered it's gov propoganda: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com
CodeWriter23 1y ago
The author does not dispute devices were found. Author expresses a belief it was controlled by a criminal enterprise. Author then claims to understand the intent of said enterprise. The pattern: 1. Corroborate fact. 2. Pose plausible cause of fact. 3. Present unsubstantiated claim as fact. Sounds like propaganda to me.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
labrador 1y ago
The Trump Secret Service is not a trustworthy institution based on the fact that they "accidentally" erased all their comms from Jan 6th 2021
ck2 1y ago
btw the escalator and teleprompter story being sabotage was also bogus https://newrepublic.com/post/200833/trump-team-messed-up-un-escalator-teleprompter https://newrepublic.com/post/200833/trump-team-messed-up-un-...
toader 1y ago
Is it a fair accusation that the "NYTimes is lying"? That seems to imply they are complicit in a propaganda campaign with the government, which seems unlikely.
- otterley 1y ago
  Not only that, but the Wall Street Journal ran the same story. https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/un-secret-service-electronic-device-network-8d30e7de?st=EUBXJY&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/un-secret-ser...
- serf 1y ago
  >That seems to imply they are complicit in a propaganda campaign with the government, which seems unlikely. in what world is that unlikely? [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
daft_pink 1y ago
It really seemed bogus to me, but also assumed that the Secret Service had evidence of criminal behavior that wasn’t publicized which this essentially confirms.
- leosussan 1y ago
  This is the exact feeling I had.
  - blitzar 1y ago
    I have a bridge to sell you
tptacek 1y ago
Seems like kind of a long way to say something that everybody had already here had already figured out in the comment threads when the original story ran. I'm not sure you need all the journalism kremlinology to say "these are normal devices used by organizations that do mass phone and message operations".
EnzoMartins 1y ago
[dead]
picafrost 1y ago
I fully agree the narrative is nonsense, the ways, means, and timing of the story is suspect, but I don't buy the "don't trust those experts, trust me, I'm the expert" vibe of this article. Criminal enterprises and nation states aren't mutually exclusive.
- poemxo 1y ago
  I got the same feeling. If anything a nation state would want to operate under the guise of a "normal criminal."
gsibble 1y ago
You do realize practically everything every bad said about Trump was the same anonymous sourcing? I don't like when people are inconsistent with how they apply standards.
jacquesm 1y ago
That story was overblown. But it wasn't bogus. SIM farms exist, this was one of them and it definitely wasn't put there for the general good of the population. They're common enough that the UK has specific legislation targeting acquisition and use of these devices. Which parts of the story were embellished and who they were embellished by is an interesting question but the degree to which the original story being bogus is balanced out nicely by the degree to which this article (and the overblown title) itself is bogus. The facts: a SIM farm was discovered. It had a very large number of active SIMS. It was found in NYC. It was active when it was found. What is speculative/hard to verify: It was used for specific swatting attempts. It was put there by nation state level actors rather than just ordinary criminals. What is most likely bullshit: That it had anything to do with the UN headquarters being close by. But that still leaves plenty of meat on the bone.
- KyleBerezin 1y ago
  Well put. I think both the NYT and this blog post are stretching for conclusions.
photochemsyn 1y ago
Given the reluctance of the US government to name the actors behind this apparently quite real sim farm, Israel would be the top suspect? https://apnews.com/article/unga-sim-farm-threat-explainer-5274ccc927ab180a1d5e0ffd475ed7c9 https://apnews.com/article/unga-sim-farm-threat-explainer-52...
aryan14 1y ago
Was thinking about this the entire time, not sure why they’re saying it has to be govt sponsored threat actors for a bunch of SIM cards Didn’t understand how it’d be used for espionage either, doesn’t even make sense
rooftopzen 1y ago
I've spent about an hour a week on this since Jan. Traced a large % of bogus news stories this year back to Reuters (fwiw) before they are picked up by other outlets and spread. I've found legitimate stories also sourced from Reuters, but haven't found illegitimate stories NOT sourced from Reuters (in other words, they seem to originate from the same source, not sure why)
joecool1029 1y ago
I haven't seen it suggested so I might as well say it: What if that equipment was actually being used by election campaigns to spam phones with election ads?
cryptoegorophy 1y ago
If this is not a red flag to stop reading the news I don’t know what else is. If you know a little about SIM card industry, calls, spam sms, verification farms then you can clearly tell that this is that kind of farm and seeing that news you start to question all other spoonfed news.
danlugo92 1y ago
Where's the list and where's the prosecution of the people on that list?
avazhi 1y ago
> New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles Stopped reading right here. That is a completely valid reason to talk to the media and happens quite often only under that specific condition.
- f33d5173 1y ago
  The rest of the article is interesting and doesn't depend on the validity of that statement.
neuronexmachina 1y ago
Reading between the lines, my guess is something like this happened: * some of the US government officials protected by the Secret Service were the targets of swatting * the USSS found the swatting calls were anonymized by a SIM Farm in/near NYC * their investigation of the SIM Farm found "300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites" * it could have hypothetically been used for swatting officials at the UN General Assembly, but that seems to be conjecture by the Secret Service, rather than anything they actually have evidence of Does that seem consistent with what we know?
- hulitu 1y ago
  > Reading between the lines, my guess is something like this happened: cough 35 miles cough.
  - Terr_ 1y ago
    I don't understand your reply. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with the parent-poster? For what reason are you highlighting that the SIM cards were present within 35 miles of NYC?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
pt9567 1y ago
fwiw - these sim machines are heavily used by ticket brokers who get unique phone numbers and tie them to ticketmaster accounts and then gets tons of verified fan codes for concerts for big tours. the big brokers import lots of these from aliexpress.
mnemotronic 1y ago
I'm a little vague on how this works. So the "bad guys" have loads of SIM cards installed into machines that can make calls or send SMS text messages, right? Doesn't each SIM card require an account with a cell phone provider in order to access "the phone network"? If not then are they getting free cell service and how do I sign up with that (ahem) provider? If so then how were those sim cards paid for? Can we follow the money?
DonHopkins 1y ago
Maybe they were going to use them to hack Google Maps and fake traffic jams! An Artist Used 99 Phones to Fake a Google Maps Traffic Jam: https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traffic-jam/ https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traff... Google Maps Hacks by Simon Weckert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5eL_al_m7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5eL_al_m7Q >99 smartphones are transported in a handcart to generate virtual traffic jam in Google Maps.Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic. #googlemapshacks
Animats 1y ago
Cell phone farm devices are a thing. Here's one you can buy on Alibaba.[1] This is a little more pro looking than the ones seen in New York. It's 20 phones in a 2U rackmount case. Costs $1880, including the phones. Cheap shipping, too. Lots of variations available. Vertical stack, different brands of Android phones, rackmount, server racks for thousands of phones, software for clicking on ads, training videos. "No code". Product info: "only provide box for development or testing use.pls do not use it for illegal" Description Package Each Box purchase includes the hardware (20 Phone motherboard ,USB cable, box power cord, phone motherboard +advanced control management software (15days free,after that $38 a year) download software from our website (in the video) Whats is Box Phone Farm ? It is a piece of equipment that removes the phone screen/battery/camera/sim slot, integrates them into a chassis, and works with click farm software to achieve group control functions. 1 box contains 20 mobile phone motherboards. Install the click farm software on your computer and you can do batch operations. Function: Install the Click Farm software on your PC, and you can operate the device in batches or operate a mobile phone individually. Only one person can control 20 mobile phones at the same time, perform the same task, or perform different tasks separately, and easily build a network matrix of thousands of mobile phones. As long as it is an online project that mobile phone users participate in, they can participate in the control. The voltage support 110v- 220V, and when running the game all the time, one box only consumes about 100 watts. Ethernet: [OTG/LAN] can use USB mode, and can also use the network cable of the router to connect the box.Two connection modes can be switched. [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/S22-Server-Rack-S8-Box-Phone_1601557481155.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/S22-Server-Rack-S8-Bo...
- cakealert 1y ago
  You do not use this thing for SMS spamming as a primary objective. Actual phone farms are for when you need actual phones, such as to run apps. Sophisticated actors likely roll their own virtualization (w/ masking) solutions.
  - Animats 1y ago
    Yes, that multi-phone rig may be overkill, but it's cheap. I'm puzzled about how the phones get their RF signals in and out when that tightly packed in metal boxes, though.
Johnny555 1y ago
I knew they were overhyping the National Security/United Nations impact when they said it was 35 miles from the UN building, in the NYC area there must be hundreds if not thousands of cell sites in that 35 miles. They certainly weren't targeting the UN building.
slashdave 1y ago
I was kinda puzzled by the story of this setup, with all these antennas, and then "35 miles from UN". Um... those aren't those kind of antennas...
EverydayBalloon 1y ago
[dead]
_1tem 1y ago
Now I understand what Chomsky was saying when he said most mainstream news media in the West is just propaganda.
johann8384 1y ago
Well, yeah, the pictures they included with the articles is a sim farm with devices available on a TOR site the same way you lease space on a server with EC2. So, it maybe could have been used to initiate a TDoS attack if someone rented the capacity but that's not what it was there for. They caught a subcontractor and they want us to think they caught a kingpin.
brokenmachine 1y ago
Is there an rss feed for this blog?
didntknowyou 1y ago
in the original article they had to do explain the threat carefully to help guide their readers go through the same mental gymnastics loops to reach their absurb conclusion.

1058 points by sixhobbits 1y ago

Previously: Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 - Sept 2025 (283 comments)

ChoGGi 1y ago

Ok, that's not the Sim Farm I expected.

JdeBP 1y ago

The https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 discussion has indeed raised all of the same points.

dang 1y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 - Sept 2025 (283 comments) I'll put that link in the top text too.
jandrese 1y ago
Yeah, the majority of the people in the posts were also highly skeptical of the USSS press release. Some of the media outlets did skip over some of the more outlandish points from that press release, but none of them were willing to call the bullshit for what it was. There is always the slim chance that the USSS has some extra info they didn't release that made this more than just a SIM bank operator who had no KYC program. The somewhat annoying part is that it seems like it is pretty easy to spot these sorts of SIM farm setups and yet nobody in law enforcement seems to care enough to actually do it.

phh 1y ago

I'm curious why they are using actual modems rather than just doing it with VoWifi that merely requires a SIM card reader (pretty much just an UART)

mrb 1y ago
They do this so they are harder to track & block. If they were sending over Wifi then they have to hide the IP, so they have to use VPNs, which are often blocked, etc. But with their solution they have a standard SIM on the standard cellular network, so it's nearly indistinquishable from a regular cellphone.
privatelypublic 1y ago
Among other things... having hundreds of calls and texts onramping from the same IP would be a rather large red flag. I'm a little surprised that a behavioral analysis didn't flag these anyway. Probably did, just the networks don't care as long as they get their cut.
- gruez 1y ago
  >having hundreds of calls and texts onramping from the same IP would be a rather large red flag. Use VPNs? Surely paying for some subscriptions at $3/month is cheaper than renting an apartment in manhattan?
  - ale42 1y ago
    You'd probably need thousands of residential IP addresses to pass under the radar with so many SIM cards.
    - preisschild 1y ago
      There are bot nets that specifically offer such services
      - asah 1y ago
        ...and perfectly legal services too, e.g. joinmassive.com, brightdata, etc. (they're used for gathering listing data from e-commerce sites, job boards, etc.) disclosure: I'm an investor/advisor in massive.

immibis 1y ago

First thing I thought when reading it. This story makes no sense. Nothing they mentioned in the article is actually illegal. Having lots of phones (even in a rack-mount form factor) isn't illegal. Even if the phone network could conceivably be DoSed with that many phones all calling at once, it's not illegal unless you actually do that or intend to do it. And their other justification was that this equipment could be used to send anonymous or encrypted communications - that's not illegal either. Even this government hasn't gotten to the point of making encryption illegal.

chinathrow 1y ago
> Nothing they mentioned in the article is actually illegal. What about sending spam and threaths over one of these SIMs? I'm pretty sure that warrants legal action.
- dboreham 1y ago
  Spam is illegal? I'd love that to be true but I don't see any spam police under the current administration (who are prolific...spamers).
- rs186 1y ago
  Have we actually established that they are used for sending spam? It's very likely, but the press release does not provide any evidence of that. All we know is that they could be used for spam.
  - immibis 1y ago
    And even if they are, if you provide a service and someone uses your service to send spam, that's not valid grounds for seizing all your equipment.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
<< First thing I thought when reading it. This story makes no sense. Nothing they mentioned in the article is actually illegal. A lot of things are not, but US for a while has been on a path that suggests that whether something is legal or not is not the standard. The standard is basically, based partially on personal vibes. Naturally, this comes years after it was normalized in banking, red flag laws and so on, so I suppose this is not a surprise, but I am surprised that people are making 'this is not illegal argument'. In this setup, illegal does not matter. If it is suspicious, you are in trouble. For example, I invite you to look at DHS/FBI 'signs'[1][2] to report by private orgs: - Producing or sharing music, videos, memes, or other media that could reflect justification for violent extremist beliefs or activities Note the could and despair at the future we are gleefully approaching. Anyway, I don't disagree with you on principle, but I want you to understand that the system behaves differently these days. https://tripwire.dhs.gov/documents/us-violent-extremist-mobilization-indicators-2021-edition https://tripwire.dhs.gov/documents/us-violent-extremist-mobi... https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/counterterrorism/us-violent-extremism-mobilization-indicators-tech-sector.pdf/view https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/counterterrorism/us-viol...

hdjdndndba 1y ago

What's with substackers these days putting hideous ai images on every other article?

ale42 1y ago

Great to see that I'm not the only one thinking that the espionage story is totally bogus.

PLenz 1y ago

I mean yeah, it was kinda obvious that they busted an ad fraud sim farm but needed to pad that resume for the bosses. There's no glory in "just" fighting fraud right now.

JdeBP 1y ago
Ironically, the Secret Service's PR people missed a trick with the press release. They could have painted this in a way that strongly resonated with people. Just tell people that this is the sort of setup that is used by (overseas) scammers to send messages to thousands of potential victims at a time to rope them into various scams. Fighting scammers is a hugely popular thing with the general public. No need to dress it up with that U.N. nonsense to get the general public's approval. People wouldn't even have minded that the Secret Service ended up uncovering a scammer support operation whilst tracking down something else.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  But what if they are currying favor from the administration, not the public? The POTUS had some embarrasing speech in the UN and now various Republicans call for airstrikes on the UN.
- nixosbestos 1y ago
  [flagged]
- WmWsjA6B29B4nfk 1y ago
  Is it within their jurisdiction though? "National security threat targeting foreign leaders and the UN" clearly is, but just fighting scammers and fraud is local LEA or FBI job
  - ryoshu 1y ago
    Possibly https://www.secretservice.gov/investigations/cyber https://www.secretservice.gov/investigations/cyber
  - 1y ago

choutos 1y ago

First thing that came to my mind was SimFarm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimFarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimFarm). And I was really confused.

shaunpud 1y ago
Reticulating splines

bilekas 1y ago

> That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable. Yeah makes a lot of sense when framed like this, the timing of the secret service of all people busting this 'huge' operation was far too suspicious.

mcintyre1994 1y ago
Also seems to be the first time NYT has used that form of words according to Google `site:nytimes.com “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”` has no earlier results Other outlets have used “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation” before though.
- Brendinooo 1y ago
  `site:nytimes.com “anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation"` shows more than one hit.
- WastedCucumber 1y ago
  Just in a cursory check into some of the other articles using the phrase, it seems like they're mostly cases where an investigator might encounter retaliation for speaking out. It's hard to imagine that happening for the present example.
  - eagleal 1y ago
    Usually it's not allowed for people involved in an ongoing investigation to talk about said investigation. Maybe the US is different.
- sixhobbits 1y ago
  That's a long enough phrase to be unique. Journalists often agree to speak to all kinds of sources "on condition of anonymity". Even if you just don't want to be sued by your employer you might not be comfortable being named. Overall I found the substack author to tell a good story and speak with what seems to be relevant technical experience so I reposted the link that I saw in another hn thread as a separate story, but as other commentors have pointed out it's possible that both he and the original journalist are hyping up conspiracies in both directions (compromised press vs state actor hackers) and actually the truth is often a more boring mid ground (Journalists hyping up stories and shady people doing shady things)

hk1337 1y ago

Both scenarios could be right? It could be just a scam bot farm but a scam bot farm with the intention of targeting vulnerable UN delegates with scams not necessarily to disrupt any cell tower?

robomc 1y ago
You're right, it could be the sensible most likely thing AND the far-fetched thing.
- alansammarone 1y ago
  You're assuming the conclusion in order to argue against it. It's slightly surprising to me that this is not obvious and actually, pretty common. You can't argue against X ("It isn't completely obvious that is bogus") by assuming X ("far-fetched thing"). I don't mean this in derogatory sense. I wasslightly...hm...confused when reading this. When I see something in the news, to the degree that I trust the source, I see it only as a statement of fact, and unless I trust the commentator, I ignore the comment. I only expect descriptive accuracy from the news. This sometimes requires resources that individuals don't generally have. When I read a personal blog article articulating a personal opinion, presenting evidence and trying to make a case for their conclusion, I usually apply a different standard. From them, I expect sound reasoning, which often requires a form of independence/neutrality that news organizations don't have. And I can't say that this article is structured as a sequence of QEDs, so to speak. It doesn't seem like the conclusions follow from the premisses. That's not to say is wrong, just that if it is right, it would be in part by accident.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Is this a bot? This reply has been essentially pasted into several places now in this article.
    - alansammarone 1y ago
      No, I'm not a bot, I just wanted it have it as reply to the article itself too, separate from this reply. It has been pasted exactly once and edited accordingly. Also, my account is 15 years old :)

nikcub 1y ago

Paying for residential / mobile proxy[0] traffic for scraping is becoming more common - this is what I always imagined the other end of the mobile part looked like. [0] https://oxylabs.io/products/mobile-proxies https://oxylabs.io/products/mobile-proxies

ghxst 1y ago
The hardware in the pictures of the NYT article don't resemble what I am familiar with when it comes to mobile data farming, they look like traditional sim equipment for texting.
lxgr 1y ago
Wow, I knew there were residential proxies for sale (for bypassing geofenced VOD content etc.), but I didn't know that was a thing for mobile data yet. Is it time to stop treating somebody's IP address as an authentication factor yet?
- singpolyma3 1y ago
  That time was always
  - lxgr 1y ago
    You know that, I know that, but the only thing that matters is decision makers at big corporations also knowing it.

bArray 1y ago

If the objective is to knock out cell towers, just jam them. It's clearly a SIM farm for middle-man communications. It just happened to be close to where the UN were.

cenamus 1y ago
Close being 35km.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  I think it's 35 miles (X 1.6).
  - boringg 1y ago
    So anywhere in NYC but it must be targeting the UN /s. Also funny was that it was considered espionage at first ... but they found lots of drugs on site -- clearly not espionage.
    - jandrese 1y ago
      They found 50g of cocaine, which is more than a personal (not Scarface) use amount of cocaine, but more on the scale of a single dealer. Like the guy running the sim farm was also selling coke on the side.
  - marcosdumay 1y ago
    Also "most of them" within 35 miles (~50 km).
- nelox 1y ago
  The World Trade Center is/was closer to UNHQ ;) Edit:ascii emoji fail
- lovich 1y ago
  It's super weird how unusual activity done by humans is correlated with dense human population centers. I cannot conceive of a reason why that would occur https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/

fidotron 1y ago

It's actually a combination of warning and bait, and it's not the first story like that nor will it be the last. Picking at the details of it misses the point. The real question here is who and what it was intended to warn off, and you'll never get a real answer to that.

ceejayoz 1y ago
The answer to that may be “no one”. The more likely scenario is they exaggerated a mundane crime into an exciting one.
- fidotron 1y ago
  They have all year to do that. The giveaway there is something odd about this is the timing.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    The timing is the President went to the UN and this makes leadership look like they stopped a big threat for some attaboys.
dzdt 1y ago
You make it sound like there must be a real high-Level strategic reason behind this. More likely it’s just a low level face-saving exercise. Someone probably spent 10s of millions of Secret Service budget chasing some threatening text messages sent to government officials, and in the end what they have to show for it is taking down a $1 million spam operation. So they hype it as a cyber-espionage threat anyway to make themselves look good.
- op00to 1y ago
  You have a mind for government work!
pessimizer 1y ago
> Picking at the details of it misses the point. I ask god to make the people I bullshit all agree with you about this. Please don't pay attention to the details; in fact, they were probably placed there by our enemies to distract us from the story (that I told you.) In fact, you're a genius, and this goes deeper than even I thought. I'm going to need access to your bank account.

stefan_ 1y ago

You know I dont really care to "set the story straight" on lowlifes with a million modems for scams or spam or what other possible activities these were up to that are a guaranteed net negative to this world.

ceejayoz 1y ago
No one’s suggesting giving their stuff back. The Secret Service bullshitting the public is still an issue.
- lyu07282 1y ago
  The media is also to blame by just taking their press release at face value and just parroting them, zero research and critical thinking at all. If law enforcement knew the press would critically report, they wouldn't bullshit us nearly as much.

ilyazub 1y ago

Wow, government-led mobile proxy network. Did they attempt to build a search index? :-)

SilverBirch 1y ago

>Who are you going to trust, these Washington insiders, “people who matter”, or an actual hacker like myself? To be honest, with the contents of the post, probably neither. It's fine if you want to point at different sources and go "ooooh WEF" and make scare quotes with your hands, but that's not actually evidence it's just a description of your existing bias. Frankly, the overstating of the threat in the original article is frankly about as bad as the overstating of the article being bogus. The feds shut down some sim farm. Is is a massive national security threat? Probably no, that's a bit of an overstatement. The NYTimes ran a clickbaity article, is it bogus? Probably no, that's a bit of an overstatement. I don't understand why people like this get so wound up by the way places like the NYTimes write up articles. This is the way journalism is written, you don't write articles that say "X happened, but it's probably fine!". You write "X happened, and it could have Y impact!". People are smart enough to read the article and understand, we don't need you making baseless accusations about their sourcing.

alansammarone 1y ago
Exactly! Thank you! :) I believe we're making very similar points in essence - see my other reply. Personally, I'd say that foreign security services having some involvement in this is slightly more plausible. If nothing else, just because some are basically nation-wide gang states, which very well could be doing this just for monetary reasons. Seems a bit more likely, not much, than a fed agency trying to do something (unclear what the author claim is about the point of the lie - "hype it up", I guess), concluding that lying about what they know in a case is a good way to do it, and choosing this case and this particular lie.

alansammarone 1y ago

I felt slightly...hm...confused when reading this. When I see something in the news, to the degree that I trust the source, I see it only as a statement of fact, and unless I trust the commentator, I ignore the comment. I only expect descriptive accuracy from the news. This sometimes requires resources that individuals don't generally have. When I read a personal blog article articulating a personal opinion, presenting evidence and trying to make a case for their conclusion, I usually apply a different standard. From them, I expect sound reasoning, which often requires a form of independence/neutrality that news organizations don't have. And let's just say this article is not exactly structured as a sequence of QEDs, so to speak. It doesn't seem like the conclusions follow from the premisses. That's not to say it's wrong, just that if it is right, it would be in part by accident.

nixosbestos 1y ago
[flagged]
- alansammarone 1y ago
  ...more like an ELI5? Sure. When Bobby tries to convince his friend Jimmy that Charlie is lying, you shouldn't trust him if he says that "I know that Charlie is lying because apples are green". > One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.
  - Brendinooo 1y ago
    >That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. I'm not even sure the apple is green! If you search `site:nytimes.com “anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation"` you'll see that this news outlet has done this multiple times in the past. I suppose "valid" and "normal" are giving the author a bunch of wiggle room here, but he never backs this claim up.

mcintyre1994 1y ago

If it is PR then it seems a bit odd. I suspect most people would care way more about them busting an SMS spam farm than protecting the communications of people at the UN. Maybe it has a specific intended audience, but protecting a UN meeting they're hosting is kinda assumed so I'm not sure who would give them much credit here.

bunnie 1y ago
Maybe building a case to send military assets into New York? Breaking up an alleged international spy ring threatening diplomatic meetings could be grounds to deploy types of forces not normally allowed otherwise...

Havoc 1y ago

Interesting. When I read the story I was wondering how banks of sims allow for eavesdropping

billy99k 1y ago

[flagged]

Spooky23 1y ago
Was it? What does “near the UN” really mean? My guess is they did some sort of sweep in advance of the president’s visit and the secret service decided, probably rashly, to do something about it instead of ignore it. The NY Post, dipshits that they are, broke the story and were the headliner on Drudge Report. They spun/blew up the story as being potentially the biggest telecom disruption since 9/11. Bullshit experts weighed in that only the Chinese, Russians or Israelis could possibly buy SIM cards. That’s how you know it’s bullshit, as outcomes of counterintelligence investigations that make the security services look dumb don’t get headline billing. The other news outlets went with a slightly less unhinged variant of the story.
michaelbuckbee 1y ago
The author is describing the typical pattern of these things (SIM farms, email spam hosts, Proxy Networks, etc.) which don't typically get VC money or large investments, but grow organically.
JdeBP 1y ago
It's not actually a contrarian view. Hacker News, the comments section of The Register, and other places where one might expect a larger proportion of the readership to know how telecommunications actually works, are all covering these same points. The involvement of the politicians was someone that was using this kit almost certainly for some minor side-line, as one does not need expensive kit capable of transmitting thousands of simultaneous messages from sites in three states in order to send hoax police reports. Indeed, the people whose operations (most probably high volume scamming, or some kind of dodgy telecommunications carrier) were primarily the purpose of this kit are probably rather cross with whoever it was who saw this kit as an opportunity for pursuing their own ends. It's the old found-major-criminal-through-a-broken-tail-light story.

giantg2 1y ago

The story isn't bogus, it's just blown out of proportion. That's unfortunately how most news articles work, especially ones related to crime. The ironic part is that this article is just as much "bogus" with the assumptions it's making.

testfrequency 1y ago
The story is bogus, the evidence isn’t*
- giantg2 1y ago
  By that measure, all stories are bogus. Even things like how a story is framed (NLP scoring for positive vs negative sentiment) would be a made up part of the story since the evidence and facts reported typically do not provide explicit evidence for whether an event should be viewed and positive or negative. This sentiment is created and added by the reporter.
kuschkufan 1y ago
If the story is espionage, but it isn't actually espionage then the story is bogus, flimflam, propaganda. Made to make you believe, i mean look, we asked all these experts too. And you are not an expert on this, so better believe us.
- iszomer 1y ago
  I thought the point of espionage is complete plausible deniability. For all you know it could be part of a bigger (psy)op to see what "lights up" when people go about sharing analyzing, critiquing this _news_..
  - kuschkufan 1y ago
    there is literally no point discussing further here. you've made up your mind already and will defend that no matter what.

raverbashing 1y ago

> Technically, it may even be legitimate enterprise, being simply a gateway between a legitimate VoIP provider and the mobile phone network. No. This is not how any of this works Just use SIP?

kotaKat 1y ago
Yes, that’s how this works, and it uses SIP. The boxes all basically turn the cell lines into SIP trunks, then they’re used for grey routes for international VoIP providers to dodge termination fees into the target country and get cheaper per-minute rates, because the game of pennies really adds up in telecoms traffic.
- raverbashing 1y ago
  Ah I see, "grey routes" makes more sense

metalman 1y ago

sim farms are also used for certain types of seo optimisation and generating organic traffic and is a systematic way of generating infuence, much the same as the ways publication mentioned does it

rob_c 1y ago

"an actual jacket like myself"... That's _sigh_ you're doing the thing that you're ranting at the agency for doing. At best you'd be an experienced pen tester in the tech industry, which is still good. Don't try to pretend you're living in a Hollywood drama. We get it you have some political bent and don't like those in charge, but given the professionalism of the setup you don't know how quickly it was setup. If the place was rented last month that _is_ a $1M investment all up front. If it's over time it's still a professional setup all the same by people looking to abuse the system in some way or other for profit. I.e. unknown threat actor until proved proven otherwise. Honestly picking at a public body bigging up the work they do for the public isn't worth a rant. If this was close enough to the UN buildings and Embassy's to cause a problem then yes. That becomes an international issue. Do you honestly think if this was just a scam farm they wouldn't take money from someone else to burn the thing and turn the city into a circus? Besides if this was an agency with tech skill but limited funding, like a certain northern province in Asia, they'd bankroll it by scamming to start anyway wouldn't they.

topspin 1y ago

So if some rando were to just find one of these huge SIM farms, who could they call, and would anything be done? With the number of radios seen in the photos from the original story, there must have been a great deal of SMS from that structure. That is very easy to spot with low cost equipment: a TinySA[1] and a directional antenna should be sufficient. Hams do "fox hunting" with similarly basic equipment. Given the resources of cell operators, the most charitable explanation for how something like this can exist for more than a brief interval is total indifference. [1] The more recent versions ($150+) are pretty powerful and can see all 4G/5G bands.

lxgr 1y ago
> Given the resources of cell operators, the most charitable explanation for how something like this can exist for more than a brief interval is total indifference. And why should they care? A paying customer is a paying customer, never mind the health and integrity of the public phone network (which coincidentally also serves as the primary identification and authentication method for ~everybody in the US).
- acdha 1y ago
  These are by and large the same companies who created the caller ID forgery problem to save money when deploying VoIP around the turn of the century. Everyone technical knew that was a bad design but the executives were thinking exactly how you described it, collecting payments for all of that extra traffic until legislation became a risk.
  - lxgr 1y ago
    Was there any specific bad design? As far as I understand it, it's more of the lack of a design (for authentication) that got us into all that trouble, similar to BGP, Email, and many other protocols that were originally designed with trusted counterparties in mind. It just so happened that the illusion of mutual trust broke down earlier in the Internet than it did in the international phone network. (Some even still believe in it to this day!)

roody15 1y ago

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I tend to agree with student, NYT and major news outlets are clearly used for propaganda and if you sit back and look at it from perhaps another angle it makes sense , why wouldn’t a world super power with a massive government apparatus use media to influence and control citizen behavior? So yes the anonymous experts, the anonymous intelligence experts, the experts on CNN panels .. etc etc. It’s the government pushing a narrative for a purpose. My two cents live your life and spend your precious emotional energy for the people you care about around you. Do things in your local community and help when and where you can.

alansammarone 1y ago
While I think I agree with most of what you're saying, I think it can be misunderstood and it can be very damaging when taken to an extreme, so I'll just leave a quote from the absolutely fantastic 20 lessons from the 20th century by Timothy Snyder: > Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
- ynniv 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - runlaszlorun 1y ago
    Unless you get your eyes open to Intuitionist Math and then you realize math isn't "true". Then again... where in the trillion or so parameters of any LLM is The Law of the Excluded Middle that classical math requires to be "true". Even more comical is that there are certainly embeddings in there _about_ an excluded middle. With thousands of dimensions and billions of values in each one. Lord help us all... Lol

numpad0 1y ago

This is odd, considering Stingray type devices in back of rideshares targeting phones by IMEI in developed countries is definitely real. But this article doesn't sound bogus, either. One plausible theory is that it was a closest plausible scapegoat that the authority could find, which isn't confidence inspiring.

t1234s 1y ago

I thought it looked suspicious how neat the cabling was done and cables taped down to the floor to prevent tripping hazards. This would most likely not be the case for a one-time event.

mmcwilliams 1y ago
Why not? That's the standard on film shoots in locations that are absolutely "one-time events". People do that all the time.
- t1234s 1y ago
  Criminals don't file for workman's comp.
  - mmcwilliams 1y ago
    They don't like tripping over their own gear, either.
    - a96 1y ago
      They also aren't known for having high levels of common sense in general, but I would also kind of expect anyone willing to work with this amount of equipment would think about cable management at least a bit.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Unless you're claiming this was pulled off by a pro film crew, that point is irrelevant. My computer setup is far from a one-time event, and my cabling is a nightmare.
  - mmcwilliams 1y ago
    The point that people tape off cables to prevent tripping over them is irrelevant? Not sure that's the case. Just because you don't care about cabling doesn't mean everyone else doesn't. I've watched network engineers do marvelous work on short order.

rs186 1y ago

One comment I saw elsewhere: why didn't we see an announcement of an arrest by FBI at the same time this story came out? Now I know why.

sidewndr46 1y ago

Why spend the effort to refute this? No one who is going to believe the original story is going to believe this.

jsw97 1y ago
I believed the original story. Now I don’t. So it helped me.
- criddell 1y ago
  It will never happen, but I'd love to see the NYT follow up their story and pit some of what Graham says against their cadre of experts and see what parts of the story they agree on and which ones they don't. I would think the people at the Times would want to know if they are just being useful idiots here.
  - nailer 1y ago
    Last time the NYT needed to correct a major story (the 'starving children in Gaza' turned out to be a boy with a genetic abnormality) they issued their correction on the '@nytimespr' X account. https://x.com/NYTimesPR/status/1950311365756817690 https://x.com/NYTimesPR/status/1950311365756817690

caseysoftware 1y ago

> One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. Yes, we should be skeptical of anything that is entirely sources from anonymous sources.. even if they align with what we want to believe. And further, I'd love to see reporters start burning sources that lie to them. After all, the source is risking/destroying the reporter's credibility along the way. Unfortunately, we'll never see that as it's all an access game.

duxup 1y ago

I'm inclined to agree with the premise of the article. There's no reason your super evil plan to knock out cell service couldn't just sit hidden. Rather this just seems like a criminal scam setup that got caught.

gootz 1y ago

So, I should get fewer texts from random numbers asking 'hi, wanna grab coffee? I'm definitely not here to steal your kidney' /s

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago

Everyone is debunking a claim that wasn't made. > The Secret Service dismantled a network of more than 300 SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards in the New York-area that were capable of crippling telecom systems and carrying out anonymous telephonic attacks, disrupting the threat before world leaders arrived for the UN General Assembly > that were capable of They didn't say this is what it was used for but that it was capable of doing so. Are we sure that's false? It sounds correct that the equipment is capable of such things.

boston_clone 1y ago
It's an unnecessary claim to be made that only serves to promote FUD, which is why a lot of rationalists are debunking it. That's like saying "during an arrest a car was impounded - this vehicle has the capability to plow into a school and harm children". Like yeah sure the capability is there, but without evidence of intention, why say it?

sbarre 1y ago

This whole thing reminds me of the 90s when the government would bust some 16 year old hacker kid in his suburban bedroom who was abusing a PBX, and then parade him around like they'd arrested Lex Luthor (the cartoon villain, not the actual hacker) and prevented a global crisis.

IAmBroom 1y ago
"We just arrested this drug pusher. One of our brave officers got a 0.001 milligram piece of fentynal on his sleeve, but fortunately after being rushed to the Emergency Room we were able to save his life. "The other 0.003 mg were lost while trying to get them in the evidence bag."
- Terr_ 1y ago
  Yeah, there are some ridiculous theatrics going on. > First responders who believe they are overdosing on fentanyl from simply touching it in fact exhibit the exact opposite of the symptoms we would expect. While fentanyl makes you euphoric and slows down your breathing, cops start breathing faster, sweat a lot, and become anxious. “I don’t want to discredit anyone or say they’re faking,” says Dr. Marino. “I do think people are having a true medical emergency when this happens. The symptoms seem most consistent with a panic attack or anxiety or a fear reaction.” > Some will claim they had to administer naloxone (trade name Narcan), which can reverse an opioid overdose, in order to save their life. But if you are conscious enough to self-administer naloxone, you’re not overdosing on opioids. You would have lost consciousness and barely been breathing. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/you-wont-die-touching-fentanyl https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/...
mewse-hn 1y ago
I forget what originally opened my eyes to the theatrics of a typical perp walk (probably Grisham) - the cops tip off the reporters, the reporters get their content for the nightly news, the cops use the front door of the station rather than using the parking garage entrance like normal. It's a bizarro red carpet event.
1y ago

dumbfounder 1y ago

Seems like it would be easy for phone companies to locate SIM farms, no? They can triangulate based on the zillion texts coming from one location?

mcswell 1y ago

Speaking to the Secret Service agent who found this: "These aren't the SIMs you're looking for."

krunger 1y ago

And china writes a blog entry on substack. And now hacker news and ycombinator are on the Chinese side of things, along with their bots. Downvoting and shadow banning. What else is new?

aedocw 1y ago

There is a lawyer (Alec Karakatsanis) who has been writing about police driven propaganda for years. His recent book "Copaganda" is fantastic. He carefully breaks down how major papers (NYT is chief among them) create stories that fit a narrative by using very one-sided sources. Like an article on crime written in bad faith where the only people quotes are police, police consultants, and ex-police. It's a really good book, I wish more people were aware of it and read it.

louwrentius 1y ago
Copaganda is indeed a good book, recommend.
AdamN 1y ago
Didn't read the book but I think it's more insidious than what you wrote. The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. In the end if a journalist can get their story out faster by leaning on a few 'trusted sources' and then move onto the next article, most of them will and their managers will encourage it. Maybe you'll get a more in depth story if it makes it to On The Media a week or two later but that's basically all we have at this point which is very sad.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. No, they know what they are doing and you can tell they know what they are doing by the careful way language is used differently for similar facts when the police or other favored entities are involved vs. other entities in similar factual circumstances (particularly, the use of constructions which separates responsibility for an adverse result from the actor, which is overwhelmingly used in US media when police are the actors—and also, when organs of the Israeli state are—but not for most other violent actors.) This is frequently described as “the exonerative mood” (or, sometimes, “the exonerative tense”, though it is not really a verb tense.) Carefully calibrated, highly-selective use of (often, quite awkward) linguistic constructs does not happen unconsciously, it is a deliberate, knowing choice.

BillTthree 1y ago

Does anyone know what crime is being investigated? It looks like the malicious activity was sending spam text messages and forwarding international phone calls. Is there a federal regulation against sending spam messages? Is it somehow illegal to have many sim cards in the same place as having many radios? The telco's are also capable of bringing down the network, and they are legally allowed to turn their services off. Its not government infrastructure, its a business. If the backbone ISP providers decided to turn off their services for an area for a time, thats fine, there are contractual provisions to deal with that. its not a crime. There has been no mention of arrest, was this 'crime' perpetrated by the infamous hackerman in ablack hoodie?

pstation 1y ago
In other countries these setups are fairly illegal because it bypasses the international call tariffs that the typically state owned telco company would be entitled to. A local domestic call might cost $.01 per minute and an international call $.20. They call it "bypass fraud". But in the US, I'm not so sure since things are already deregulated.
- toast0 1y ago
  US doesn't really have bypass fraud as a category, no; there's no real pricing difference based on the source of a call. Inbound international calls don't have to pay extra termination costs vs domestic calls and outbound international calls aren't paying much more than the cost of a local call + whatever the foreign carrier charges for termination. If you were doing bypass fraud in another country for calls to/from the US, you don't need SIM farms in the US, because you could just get a SIP account. These boxes would be used for pricing arbitrage where a mobile phone user can get 'unlimited' calling or messaging but a bulk messaging/calling customer would have to pay something per message or minute, or to avoid customer identification or restrictions on message that would happen with a bulk account.

throwaway150919 1y ago

[flagged]

nailer 1y ago

> using radio “triangulation” (sic) Why is triangulation an error?

Empact 1y ago
It's literally not, which casts the rest of the author's conclusions into doubt.
- nailer 1y ago
  Ah. I thought they meant that 'triangulation' was a spelling mistake. Like: > The share price of Maple Leaf Gardens, which owns the Toronto Maple Leafs (sic) hockey team...

pkphilip 1y ago

Reminds me of the time when I consulted with a very large newspaper chain in the US which owned a lot of papers - both left leaning and right leaning. we used to get feeds from all of the usual sources. But the news articles themselves were "massaged" in various ways by some of the same editorial teams to suit the left-leaning or the right-leaning newspapers. The idea that completely different spin can be put to the same news - and by the same editorial teams, was a big eye opener for me. What this taught me is that the media's primary role is to polarise people to either the left or the right so that they can be herded to vote along or act along prescribed lines. What the media and the establishment hates are people who are not either left or right leaning and who are capable of picking and choosing the narrative depending on what makes the most sense - that is, the so called centrists. But here we are more than 2 decades later from that time and I see that the spin doctors are busier than ever and the "centrists" have almost completely disappeared.

klysm 1y ago
I think this is a consequence of our plurality voting system and the resulting game theory. Polarization is the most effective strategy, and it also has a bunch of other knock on effects that benefit the people in power.
Workaccount2 1y ago
>What this taught me is that the media's primary role is to polarise people to either the left or the right so that they can be herded to vote along or act along prescribed lines. It has nothing to do with voting or acting. It has everything to do with locking in another consistent reader (aka "ad viewer"). If you can get someone ideologically driven, they become hooked, and you can stroke their ego by feeding them confirmation bias news. It becomes addictive, where the person gets hooked on news that tells them they are right. All of that just to get them to scroll past or listen to ads multiple times a day. I genuinely believe if we could scooby-do style pull off the mask of who is destroying the country, it would be the media. I have seen too many people in my life (and seemingly everyone online) go off the ideological deep-end because they fell into the media's ad-farming psy-op game.
- 1y ago

gaoshan 1y ago

There is so much to address in this post but I want to look at just this part: "One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable." It is not accurate to claim "that's not a thing". Citing anonymous sources is a long established practice (in particular when it comes to law enforcement activities or potentially sensitive political reporting). The NYT has formal editorial standards around the identity of anonymous sources that require editors to assess the justification for applying it. It doesn't mean the information is reliable, that's where an editorial eye comes into play, but it does fall under the category of normal journalistic practice. Next the "Washington Game": there’s a grain of truth here, but it is overstated. Yes, leaks can be part of a strategic move by politicians and it can be a source of exploitation by political operators but to equate all anonymous sourcing with propaganda is misleading. Plenty of such reporting has resulted in significant truths being revealed and powerful people being held accountable (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib). Responsible reporting involves weighing a source's motivations as well as corroborating and contextualizing that information as accurately and truthfully as possible. The author's dismissiveness oversimplifies (or mischaracterizes, if I am being less generous) the reason and function of anonymity here. They overstate the issue with propaganda and anonymous sources. Accurate in the sense that anonymity can enable propaganda (it has happened), it is inaccurate in its absolutism. I feel like this sort of tone, with the absolutism, the attempt to reduce the complexity and nuance of reporting to the point where it can be dismissed is pretty typical of what passes for commentary in today's blog/tweet/commentary culture but it really plays more into the hands of those that would sow confusion and mistrust than it does into that of the truth and accuracy.

glenstein 1y ago
One of the more sober assessments in this entire thread, and closely aligned with how I experienced it. It's not nothing to stress the fact that it was pretty far away from the UN and that it's not obvious why a case of SIM cards would enable surveillance (seems more like it would anonymize an individual bad actor). But a large part of this is completely unsubstantiated speculation that people are nodding along with, which, in my opinion, is showing a breakdown in the ability to comprehend logical or evidence-based arguments.

throwmeaway222 1y ago

Can we perma-block nytimes since we discovered it's gov propoganda: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com

CodeWriter23 1y ago

The author does not dispute devices were found. Author expresses a belief it was controlled by a criminal enterprise. Author then claims to understand the intent of said enterprise. The pattern: 1. Corroborate fact. 2. Pose plausible cause of fact. 3. Present unsubstantiated claim as fact. Sounds like propaganda to me.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

labrador 1y ago

The Trump Secret Service is not a trustworthy institution based on the fact that they "accidentally" erased all their comms from Jan 6th 2021

ck2 1y ago

btw the escalator and teleprompter story being sabotage was also bogus https://newrepublic.com/post/200833/trump-team-messed-up-un-escalator-teleprompter https://newrepublic.com/post/200833/trump-team-messed-up-un-...

toader 1y ago

Is it a fair accusation that the "NYTimes is lying"? That seems to imply they are complicit in a propaganda campaign with the government, which seems unlikely.

otterley 1y ago
Not only that, but the Wall Street Journal ran the same story. https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/un-secret-service-electronic-device-network-8d30e7de?st=EUBXJY&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/un-secret-ser...
serf 1y ago
>That seems to imply they are complicit in a propaganda campaign with the government, which seems unlikely. in what world is that unlikely? [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

daft_pink 1y ago

It really seemed bogus to me, but also assumed that the Secret Service had evidence of criminal behavior that wasn’t publicized which this essentially confirms.

leosussan 1y ago
This is the exact feeling I had.
- blitzar 1y ago
  I have a bridge to sell you

tptacek 1y ago

Seems like kind of a long way to say something that everybody had already here had already figured out in the comment threads when the original story ran. I'm not sure you need all the journalism kremlinology to say "these are normal devices used by organizations that do mass phone and message operations".

EnzoMartins 1y ago

[dead]

picafrost 1y ago

I fully agree the narrative is nonsense, the ways, means, and timing of the story is suspect, but I don't buy the "don't trust those experts, trust me, I'm the expert" vibe of this article. Criminal enterprises and nation states aren't mutually exclusive.

poemxo 1y ago
I got the same feeling. If anything a nation state would want to operate under the guise of a "normal criminal."

gsibble 1y ago

You do realize practically everything every bad said about Trump was the same anonymous sourcing? I don't like when people are inconsistent with how they apply standards.

jacquesm 1y ago

That story was overblown. But it wasn't bogus. SIM farms exist, this was one of them and it definitely wasn't put there for the general good of the population. They're common enough that the UK has specific legislation targeting acquisition and use of these devices. Which parts of the story were embellished and who they were embellished by is an interesting question but the degree to which the original story being bogus is balanced out nicely by the degree to which this article (and the overblown title) itself is bogus. The facts: a SIM farm was discovered. It had a very large number of active SIMS. It was found in NYC. It was active when it was found. What is speculative/hard to verify: It was used for specific swatting attempts. It was put there by nation state level actors rather than just ordinary criminals. What is most likely bullshit: That it had anything to do with the UN headquarters being close by. But that still leaves plenty of meat on the bone.

KyleBerezin 1y ago
Well put. I think both the NYT and this blog post are stretching for conclusions.

photochemsyn 1y ago

Given the reluctance of the US government to name the actors behind this apparently quite real sim farm, Israel would be the top suspect? https://apnews.com/article/unga-sim-farm-threat-explainer-5274ccc927ab180a1d5e0ffd475ed7c9 https://apnews.com/article/unga-sim-farm-threat-explainer-52...

aryan14 1y ago

Was thinking about this the entire time, not sure why they’re saying it has to be govt sponsored threat actors for a bunch of SIM cards Didn’t understand how it’d be used for espionage either, doesn’t even make sense

rooftopzen 1y ago

I've spent about an hour a week on this since Jan. Traced a large % of bogus news stories this year back to Reuters (fwiw) before they are picked up by other outlets and spread. I've found legitimate stories also sourced from Reuters, but haven't found illegitimate stories NOT sourced from Reuters (in other words, they seem to originate from the same source, not sure why)

joecool1029 1y ago

I haven't seen it suggested so I might as well say it: What if that equipment was actually being used by election campaigns to spam phones with election ads?

cryptoegorophy 1y ago

If this is not a red flag to stop reading the news I don’t know what else is. If you know a little about SIM card industry, calls, spam sms, verification farms then you can clearly tell that this is that kind of farm and seeing that news you start to question all other spoonfed news.

danlugo92 1y ago

Where's the list and where's the prosecution of the people on that list?

avazhi 1y ago

> New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles Stopped reading right here. That is a completely valid reason to talk to the media and happens quite often only under that specific condition.

f33d5173 1y ago
The rest of the article is interesting and doesn't depend on the validity of that statement.

neuronexmachina 1y ago

Reading between the lines, my guess is something like this happened: * some of the US government officials protected by the Secret Service were the targets of swatting * the USSS found the swatting calls were anonymized by a SIM Farm in/near NYC * their investigation of the SIM Farm found "300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites" * it could have hypothetically been used for swatting officials at the UN General Assembly, but that seems to be conjecture by the Secret Service, rather than anything they actually have evidence of Does that seem consistent with what we know?

hulitu 1y ago
> Reading between the lines, my guess is something like this happened: cough 35 miles cough.
- Terr_ 1y ago
  I don't understand your reply. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with the parent-poster? For what reason are you highlighting that the SIM cards were present within 35 miles of NYC?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

pt9567 1y ago

fwiw - these sim machines are heavily used by ticket brokers who get unique phone numbers and tie them to ticketmaster accounts and then gets tons of verified fan codes for concerts for big tours. the big brokers import lots of these from aliexpress.

mnemotronic 1y ago

I'm a little vague on how this works. So the "bad guys" have loads of SIM cards installed into machines that can make calls or send SMS text messages, right? Doesn't each SIM card require an account with a cell phone provider in order to access "the phone network"? If not then are they getting free cell service and how do I sign up with that (ahem) provider? If so then how were those sim cards paid for? Can we follow the money?

DonHopkins 1y ago

Maybe they were going to use them to hack Google Maps and fake traffic jams! An Artist Used 99 Phones to Fake a Google Maps Traffic Jam: https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traffic-jam/ https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traff... Google Maps Hacks by Simon Weckert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5eL_al_m7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5eL_al_m7Q >99 smartphones are transported in a handcart to generate virtual traffic jam in Google Maps.Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic. #googlemapshacks

Animats 1y ago

Cell phone farm devices are a thing. Here's one you can buy on Alibaba.[1] This is a little more pro looking than the ones seen in New York. It's 20 phones in a 2U rackmount case. Costs $1880, including the phones. Cheap shipping, too. Lots of variations available. Vertical stack, different brands of Android phones, rackmount, server racks for thousands of phones, software for clicking on ads, training videos. "No code". Product info: "only provide box for development or testing use.pls do not use it for illegal" Description Package Each Box purchase includes the hardware (20 Phone motherboard ,USB cable, box power cord, phone motherboard +advanced control management software (15days free,after that $38 a year) download software from our website (in the video) Whats is Box Phone Farm ? It is a piece of equipment that removes the phone screen/battery/camera/sim slot, integrates them into a chassis, and works with click farm software to achieve group control functions. 1 box contains 20 mobile phone motherboards. Install the click farm software on your computer and you can do batch operations. Function: Install the Click Farm software on your PC, and you can operate the device in batches or operate a mobile phone individually. Only one person can control 20 mobile phones at the same time, perform the same task, or perform different tasks separately, and easily build a network matrix of thousands of mobile phones. As long as it is an online project that mobile phone users participate in, they can participate in the control. The voltage support 110v- 220V, and when running the game all the time, one box only consumes about 100 watts. Ethernet: [OTG/LAN] can use USB mode, and can also use the network cable of the router to connect the box.Two connection modes can be switched. [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/S22-Server-Rack-S8-Box-Phone_1601557481155.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/S22-Server-Rack-S8-Bo...

cakealert 1y ago
You do not use this thing for SMS spamming as a primary objective. Actual phone farms are for when you need actual phones, such as to run apps. Sophisticated actors likely roll their own virtualization (w/ masking) solutions.
- Animats 1y ago
  Yes, that multi-phone rig may be overkill, but it's cheap. I'm puzzled about how the phones get their RF signals in and out when that tightly packed in metal boxes, though.

Johnny555 1y ago

I knew they were overhyping the National Security/United Nations impact when they said it was 35 miles from the UN building, in the NYC area there must be hundreds if not thousands of cell sites in that 35 miles. They certainly weren't targeting the UN building.

slashdave 1y ago

I was kinda puzzled by the story of this setup, with all these antennas, and then "35 miles from UN". Um... those aren't those kind of antennas...

EverydayBalloon 1y ago

[dead]

_1tem 1y ago

Now I understand what Chomsky was saying when he said most mainstream news media in the West is just propaganda.

johann8384 1y ago

Well, yeah, the pictures they included with the articles is a sim farm with devices available on a TOR site the same way you lease space on a server with EC2. So, it maybe could have been used to initiate a TDoS attack if someone rented the capacity but that's not what it was there for. They caught a subcontractor and they want us to think they caught a kingpin.

brokenmachine 1y ago

Is there an rss feed for this blog?

didntknowyou 1y ago

in the original article they had to do explain the threat carefully to help guide their readers go through the same mental gymnastics loops to reach their absurb conclusion.