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

51–60 of 656 posts

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#51

Post by nixosbestos »

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…

[flagged]

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#52

Post by lazide »

alansammarone wrote: post #32
robomc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, it could be the sensible most likely thing AND the far-fetched thing.

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 se…

Is this a bot? This reply has been essentially pasted into several places now in this article.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#53

Post by op00to »

dzdt wrote: post #39
fidotron wrote: post #27

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.

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 mak…

You have a mind for government work!

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#54

Post by ceejayoz »

fidotron wrote: post #45
ceejayoz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to that may be “no one”. The more likely scenario is they exaggerated a mundane crime into an exciting one.

They have all year to do that. The giveaway there is something odd about this is the timing.

The timing is the President went to the UN and this makes leadership look like they stopped a big threat for some attaboys.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#55

Post by WastedCucumber »

alansammarone wrote: post #41

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, presenti…

This article describes some secret service messaging about busting some basic (possibly?) criminal enterprise, how the NYT amplifies that messaging without question, and names a couple of experts who the author finds questionable (which is the part I'm most unsure about, but honestly I just don't want to have more names to memorize).

After everything the gov't has tried to hype in the last decade (I'm including some things under Biden's term too), and esp. the efforts made in Trump second term, sure seems like it checks out to me.

So maybe you could name one of the conclusions and its premises, and describe how they don't follow. Cause I certainly don't follow what you're on about.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#56

Post by Brendinooo »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #28
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.

`site:nytimes.com “anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation"` shows more than one hit.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#58

Post by lyu07282 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #34
stefan_ wrote: post #30

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.

No one’s suggesting giving their stuff back. The Secret Service bullshitting the public is still an issue.

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.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#59

Post by alansammarone »

SilverBirch wrote: post #40

>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 ar…

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.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#60

Post by Brendinooo »

alansammarone wrote: post #50
nixosbestos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

...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…

>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.

Post reply on HN