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That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

cybersect.substack.com

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Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#81

Post by sixhobbits »

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.

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)

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#83

Post by ghxst »

nikcub wrote: post #24

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

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.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#84

Post by ryoshu »

WmWsjA6B29B4nfk wrote: post #70
JdeBP wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Possibly https://www.secretservice.gov/investigations/cyber

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#85

Post by JdeBP »

billy99k wrote: post #63

[flagged]

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.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#86

Post by lxgr »

notatoad wrote: post #74
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…

I think, the more extraordinary the claim is, the more proof is required. And I’m with you, I’d normally be incredibly skeptical of a substack post from an author I’ve never heard of before, who writes as egotistically as this. But there is just no extraordinary claim in this article. Only a very very ordinary claim that should be believable to any person who has ever owned a cell phone: SIM farms are normal, common…

> SIM farms are normal, common things that exist all over the place to allow messages from far-away senders to be sent as if they came from a local number.

Meanwhile, many US companies won't let me, the actual legitimate user they're trying to authenticate, use Google Voice, because it's "so dangerous and spoofable, unlike real SIM cards".

Hopefully this helps a little bit in driving that point home.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#87

Post by [deleted] »

firesteelrain wrote: post #77
matthewdgreen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The novel information in this article (confirmed by some technical experts on other platforms) is that this kind of SMS scam relay is a well-known sort of enterprise. I wasn’t aware of this, although it doesn’t surprise me. Once you have that context, the rest of the NYT article kind of falls apart by itself.

I wouldn’t say the NYT article falls apart it is just less sensationalistic. Very likely as this substack article suggests that these SIM farms do knock out SMS from time to time because they DDoS the tower. So that part is correct. Nation state ? Ok maybe far fetched. These farms are not out of reach of a normal person who over time purchases the technical pieces. It’s an investment.

[deleted]

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#88

Post by [deleted] »

amiga386 wrote: post #72
Brendinooo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Normal convention is that an agency will make no comment about any ongoing investigation, because making public comment prior to bringing charges could be prejudicial to the case. If, for whatever reason, the agency feels like it's not risking its own case and wants to blow its trumpet... it really doesn't matter what the names of the spokespeople for the agency are. They don't need to speak anonymously, as they won'…

[deleted]

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#89

Post by JdeBP »

WmWsjA6B29B4nfk wrote: post #70
JdeBP wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

It was where they started, which was following up on threat telephone activity, false police reports directed at prominent people. For the making of which the malefactor had probably seen this kit as an ideal opportunity, but for which purpose it is massively expensive and over-provisioned.

And that's the point. No-one would have thought bad of them for following up on stuff within their bailiwick and uncovering a scam support operation. It's the old caught-the-major-bad-guy-in-a-routine-traffic-stop tale, after all.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#90

Post by rob_c »

"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.

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