Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

cybersect.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 656 posts

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#21

Post by ajross »

hk1337 wrote: post #17

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?

Why would you need to target "vulnerable UN delegates" from blocks away from the UN, though? Literally anywhere in the US would do. It's literally SMS, the location of the transmitter says nothing about the location of the recipient.

No, they put this in lower manhattan because of the cell density there. It makes the fraud harder to detect in all the noise of normal usage.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#22

Post by actionfromafar »

JdeBP wrote: post #19
PLenz wrote: post #11

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.

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…

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.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#25

Post by crystaln »

ajross wrote: post #21
hk1337 wrote: post #17

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?

Why would you need to target "vulnerable UN delegates" from blocks away from the UN, though? Literally anywhere in the US would do. It's literally SMS , the location of the transmitter says nothing about the location of the recipient. No, they put this in lower manhattan because of the cell density there. It makes the fraud harder to detect in all the noise of normal usage.

I believe if you connect directly to the tower a phone is connected to you can bypass central spam filters.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#27

Post by fidotron »

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.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#28

Post by mcintyre1994 »

bilekas wrote: post #15

> 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.

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.

Post reply on HN