Comment by topspin
13 hours ago
Charges? Cool. In the US we find huge SIM farms in major cities[1], law enforcement shrugs, and everyone forgets about it.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-sim-farms-like-the-o...
13 hours ago
Charges? Cool. In the US we find huge SIM farms in major cities[1], law enforcement shrugs, and everyone forgets about it.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-sim-farms-like-the-o...
SIM farm is a different scenario and arguably not even illegal. This story is about scammers operating a DIY stingray that broadcasts phishing messages via SMS to nearby devices.
SIM farms / phone farms aren't inherently illegal. Some are used pro-socially, for example to enumerate hosts in malicious IoT botnets.
People I know in US telecom are not surprised by these SIM farms. These people are either:
a) Doing some weird grey market VoIP thing. 32-in-1 GSM to SIP gateways have been a thing for a very long time in the developing world. Maybe they think they found some arbitrage route for phone traffic to/from the US PSTN that they can profit from. Anyone who interacts with grey market voip stuff will recognize these things immediately.
b) Using them for something like receiving 2FA authentication codes to create bot/socketpuppet social media accounts. In this sort of scenario they'd have live phone numbers/service and the cheapest possible phone plan, and ability to receive incoming SMS. The accounts then get provided to some other group of people who are doing mass advertising/social media manipulation.
Regarding B, why would you create your sock puppets in the US instead of in some developing country where everything is a lot cheaper?
If they are using it for 2FA it's likely for some US-only service.
"Authentic" US domestic resident sockpuppets for political or social manipulation. Combined with things like using residential proxies/relays through traffic on compromised routers on top-10 sized US last mile broadband providers such as Comcast, RCN. Google "residential proxies for sale" for some examples.
Plenty of things like the various services run by Meta will treat your content differently if they know you're coming from a Bangladesh phone number and ISP vs. being what appears to be an authentic domestic USA human.
Having live US phone numbers that can receive SMS for "is a live human receiving this code" verification purposes is also useful for many other kinds directly fraudulent activities.
c) grey route outbound sms. Even cheap US plans tend to have 'unlimited' sms, sometimes even to selected foreign destinations. Sometimes carrier billed SMS is cheaper than aggregators (but not too often) or may have better routing to difficult destinations.
Yes, I can definitely see that being plausible, particularly if they've gone to the efforts to make software tooling to spread out the outbound SMS volume around many different SIM and self-rate limit their volume, to avoid getting cut off, rate limited, or account banned.
To point A: I remember a long while ago making a 'free VoIP' call and my call routed into a MetroPCS recording telling me my service was suspended for nonpayment. Hung up, redialed, number shot through another dodgy route.
Good times!
SIM farms are devices with a lot of SIM cards aka numbers used to scam/flood victims numbers after these were acquired through ad companies, purchased these numbers online, etc.
The OP ones are actively scanning the vicinity and acting like BTS to connect to phones automatically, equipped with radio antennas, SDR, etc. to gather the victims numbers in real time and send them spam/phishing while the phones are connected to to these BTS
The real story is the government didn’t really care about users being spammed, you get those all the times and there’s little regulation to protect you (like preventing corporate from selling your number etc.), they cared because with these devices people can and will communicate outside of the approved channels, that also might be encrypted too, so harsh charges and make it as public as possible to deter others from doing the same, even if they were not in it to scam or phish people, and notice on the emphasis on “blocking the 911 calls!!” so jamming charges are there too.
"Law enforcement shrugs"? The whole focus of the article is about how the secret service confiscated those devices and charged the SIM farm operators with crimes. Which part of that is shrugging?
The article is about Canada.
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Not really, the FCC regularly drops >$300k fines on people not creative enough to figure out a revenue model that doesn't irritate everybody. =3