SIM city: Feds say 100,000-card farms could have killed cell towers in NYC The US Secret Service has dismantled a network of SIM farms in and around New York City it claims was behind multiple incidents targeting senior government officials and had enough power to disrupt entire cellular networks. The network – or at least the parts the Secret Service has discovered – was massive, consisting of more …
I’m not sure what the repeatedly stated false equivalence of ‘within 35 miles of the UN Building in NYC’ is all about…..The only person wanting a shutdown of the UN is Trump. There are many global leaders there right now for the UNGA .. but security is high.
The UN Building in New York is in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan, bordering the East River to the east, First Avenue to the west, East 48th Street to the north, and East 42nd Street to the south. Nearby landmarks include the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, and the New York Public Library
"What "state actors" might want the UN shut down?"
The big issue now at the current meeting is Gaza and support and recognition of the Palestine State. The US has gone out of their way to prevent the attendance of Palestinian diplomats and politicians.
So, some "state actor" who would like to prevent any attention to the case of the Palestinians would come to mind, I guess.
SIM farms provide local access to cell networks from anywhere on the Internet. They are apparently used mainly by people who want to send SMS spam. They mainly exist to bypass normal business rate billing for SMS messages, but some also use them to provide voice access which bypasses long distance rates.
Network operators of course don't like the loss of revenue so they try to detect them and then get them shut down.
I think they tend to be spread out in small installations to make them harder to detect by network operators and to avoid causing too much congestion on individual cell towers.
I believe the UK just recently introduced legislation banning possession of SIM farms except by people who can show a legitimate (approved) use for them.
The death penalty is environmentally friendly. People are a renewable resource, composting captures carbon into the soil and there's less people to consume scarce resources.
The death penalty is useful. For example, if we kill all people who put empty After Eight wrappers back in the box, having consumed the chocolate, then we can breed this appalling perversion out of the population, after just a few generations.
Also people who put dirty cutlery in the sink, rather than the fucking dishwasher that's standing right, fucking next to it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you're too bone idle to stick it in there, just leave it on the draining board, so I don't have to get my hands all slimy when I come to tidy up your mess and have to put the dirty (and now wet) stuff in there. Or when someone needs to use the sink, they first have to tidy up.
Also, people who wear sunglasses indoors without a note from their doctor.
...and another thing!
[2 years after I ain't Spartacus became Prime Minister the world was a much quieter and more civilised place. However the global population had now fallen to just 3.5 million and the only company that hadn't gone bankrupt was Bob's Bargain Execution Services Ltd]
What about the people who don't know the difference between fewer and less?
I could care less about this...
Actually I couldn't. What are the opposites of "fewer" and "less"? The opposites of both are "more". Therefore they are the same word with the same meaning and I don't care which you use. Except fewer sounds a bit rubbish, so I think it should be abolished. This is also environmentally friendly, as dictionaries will have fewer less pages, and so save a few trees.
Oh bugger! Save a less trees? Perhaps we're forced to keep fewer then, and destroy less. Just a shame about the phrase more or less. English really could do with a bit of a tidy up.
I believe the UK just recently introduced legislation banning possession of SIM farms except by people who can show a legitimate (approved) use for them.
That confuzzled me a bit because I thought SIM trees already were illegal. But a quick search found the vultures beat me to it-
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/29/uk_sim_farm_ban/
Ofcom's decision in 2017 to legalize SIM farms, also known as commercial multi-user gateways (COMUGs), brought hope that the charges would be overturned.
Not one of Ofcom's brightest decisions. But pre-2017 I did have a couple of prospects wanting to rent these as a service from the big telco I was working for at the time. So some fun working with our security group to find out more about what they were up to. Like others have said, the answer was usually 'nothing good' and often a combo of SIP trunks and SIM farms to support SMS spamming and disguising the origin of spam calls.. Which made Ofcom's decision to legalize them all the more puzzling because at the time, Ofcom wanted to stomp on them hard due to abuse. Plus risk to mobile operator's infrastructure a lot of mobile base stations didn't have much bandwidth and sim trees could easily swamp them and stop legitimate users from making calls.
Kinda suprised it took US operators so long to shut this one down because this kind of abuse is pretty easy to detect. Unless of course the operators didn't care, as long as they were getting paid. If we in the UK think mobile spam is bad.. it's much, much worse in the US.
It's that time of year again.
I was thinking 'we want to buy your house' people. I was getting half a dozen voice calls a day plus texts. Finally went DND on my phone and only accept from my contacts. After about a week the calls and texts stopped entirely. Works better than the Telco SPAM call blocking. Kind of makes you wonder if the Suspected SPAM identifier was half-hearted and half-assed.
Ugh. I used to get a lot of those, with an automated (but pretending to be human) voice asking me questions ("you have Medicare Parts A and B, right?"). I finally told it I had Medicare (nope, far too young), and it transferred me to a human - who I told that I would never fall for this scam. He swore and me and hung up. Haven't gotten another one since.
I get these calls very frequently, what I end up doing is saying "yes" to all the automated questions so the system gets a human on the line, then I immediately put them on hold. It's interesting to see how long they will remain on hold, usually it is just a few seconds, but I once had one that waited for over a minute.
They can be used for attacks, but they can also be used as local numbers for NorK workers. They can be used to bulk up feedback on sales sites that have detectors to prevent spamming feedback from one IP address. They can be used to set up Esty, eBay and Amazon seller accounts that will be sold later with some history so they aren't as restricted as a new account. I won't buy from somebody on eBay with a new account, a foreign account (if I can help it) or one with a low feedback score. Sellers of imported tat that accumulate a low rating will start a new account and transfer their listings over.
It's those low-level grey applications that earn a steady ROI. Yes, a set like these can be used for an attack, but not often twice so it can get expensive as a disposable install. It would be dangerous for somebody to try and collect the hardware as there may be ear-budded operators standing by in their buzz cuts and tactical gear, aka: jumpout boys.
The story sounds better with state-level attack scenarios than spammy Amazon seller accounts and fake feedback operations.
Probably it is set up by ordinary scammers, and they rent out their services.
You want to do some SMS spamming, talk to us and tell us what to send and to how many numbers and you can calculate the price based on this table.
You want to do something illegal that would require destroying the SIM card after it is done like swatting, OK here's the list price for that with a surcharge if the target is someone who will attract more attention like MTG.
You want to have every SIM place a phone call at once to jam up the cell network citywide, call for a quote.
"You want to have every SIM place a phone call at once to jam up the cell network citywide, call for a quote."
The telco isn't bothered by fraud that doesn't affect them, but jam up some cell towers and they'll pinpoint the location and order up CAS, helicopters and troops repelling down ropes into the buildings. It could be a pre-cursor move to something else so the Feds will take immediate notice in a big city. Not so much for a farm town in Iowa but the operation really sticks out in a place like that.
The Metro, a very low-grade 'newspaper', predictably reports this as likely the work of Russia, Iran, or China:
https://metro.co.uk/galleries/huge-plot-to-bring-down-new-yorks-phone-network-points-towards-russia-iran-or-china-24242658/
Elsewhere, it is reported as being typical cybercriminal and mobile spam equipment:
https://www.wired.com/story/sim-farm-new-york-threatened-us-infrastructure-feds-say/
If you read the Wired article you'll see that the feds said "within 35 miles of downtown Manhattan" and pointed out the upcoming UN session as one possible risk target
Somebody with an agenda has conflated the two and I really hope it isn't our tame Vulture
Wired also correctly points out that these (illegal in the US) SIM farms are relatively commonplace and that the reason THIS set of farms was found comes down to it being used to SWAT a couple of high level politicians - its primary use is low level SMS spam and other fraud, which is profitable
It's a sad day when the vultures start following the sensationalist path instead of doing some basic research
Nah, you could just set the shipping address name as "Johnny's Cellphone and Vape Shack" and they'll likely figure you as a fly-by-night vendor working out of a kiosk somewhere. You'd be surprised how many supposedly industry only supply channels you can get access to as long as your nonexistent company name sounds plausible enough.
Well there might have been nation state actors involved but I bet they had a lot of assistance & encouragement from US political actors. I don't know if politics was ever clean but it has become very, very dirty recently. I blame globalism as its adherents act outside of national interests and that means to the detriment of the public as a whole.
Any way you slice it, real people had to
1. Rent the apartments.
2. Show up and physically put the SIM cards into the units.
3. Plug the units into the wall power.
4. Connect the units to that router in the middle of the group of units.
5. Plug that router into what looks like a 5G internet gateway.
So lots of opportunity to get folks on security cams, if nothing else. Also, lots of serial numbers to track down & supply chains to follow.
I suppose you could cast a lot of votes with a couple of these farms in every European state but US isn't in Eurovision and I think Israel in on the naughty step.
(Australians wouldn't care enough to be bothered, nor would be too happy to host it in Sydney if we ever won.)
I was wondering apart from the nefarious uses of voice and SMS services, is there some particularly nasty use that a large number of data (internet) services could be put ?
Read the wired article.
Ebay and Amazon account farming and feedback fraud is one of the activities. Voice/SMS spam is only part of it
Disturbingly, this set of farms was only found because a couple of politicians got SWATed. If it had been lesser mortals it would have continued to sail under the radar despite the entire operation being illegal in the USA and the equipment being a prohibited import there (SIM farms are legal in Britain and many other countries for the moment)
One of the uses these kinds of farms have been detected in use for is Nork remote worker scams. You'd think the USA (and others) would be actively hunting them
Most of the comments regarding this article seem to be focused on using the SIM farms for spamming etc.
I would suggest that these SIM Farms are part of a bigger operation that could be used for much more damaging things.
(Detail is obviously missing as I do NOT wish a visit from some nice people in 'Black Helicopters' !!!)
List of items required:
1. SIM Farm(s) for 100,000+ SIMs.
2. 'Cell Tower' emulator(s) that can be used to clone 'Real' Cell Tower(s). [Has 'short range' so needs to be near to the target(s)]
3. 'Interesting software' similar to the software a well-known Israeli company sells to Govts of all colours.
4. Nefarious nation state operatives (various)
Example Process to Follow:
1. Clone a Cell Tower that is near to your target(s), set it to ONLY accept connections from your target(s) (Filter by IMEI number)
2. Use the SIM Farm(s) to flood the Real Cell Towers around the area with tens of thousands of Call attempts.
3. When the target(s) phone tries to connect to the real Cell Tower(s) it will fail due to the service being BUSY, BUT the clone Cell Tower(s) will work and accept the connection from the target(s).
4. The 'Cell Tower' Emulator can now act as a MITM for anything you may do using your 'Interesting software' ... Use your imagination for what can be done !!! [First thing to do is make the phone ONLY talk to the 'Cell Tower' Emulator from now on !!!]
5. Stop flooding the Real Cell Tower(s).
6. You now can forward on calls to the real cell network [MITM] and the targets will be none the wiser that they are being monitored/recorded/etc
7. Do all the naughty & nasty things that Nefarious nation state operatives tend to do !!!
:)
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