The conspiratorial corner of my brain says there is more to this than just a text SPAM MILL aimed at the UN.
That appears to be a very costly setup. Who can afford to set up rig like that? I wonder how many more are situated in strategic places around the country just waiting for the right time to shut down communication.
On the other hand, maybe the dozens of political fund raising texts I get every day will now stop.
I’ll close off that part of my brain until the other shoe drops.
I thought that also, but then I realized that any government agency attempting to do this would have required billions of dollars and the project would be years behind schedule. 😜
Criminals bring in quite a bit of phishing/spam revenue. And remember this almost certainly wasn't procured at list prices. The kit almost certainly fell off a truck somewhere or got sold secondhand.
Happy Birthday Ryan, donated to the non-lethal aid to Ukraine using your link. I think you have vastly understated what was going on here. Some large nation/state actor somehow rented a bunch of apartments in a 35 mile range of NYC (that's difficult and expensive enough) and spent millions on 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers on racks (there are pictures) capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute? This effort represents millions of dollars, probably at least twenty to fifty coked up technicians and years of preparation. What's the FBI and the CIA been doing lately that they didn't notice this and the Secret Service had to find it? This is a massive expensive effort, one would safely assume whatever nation/state actor did this also did the same thing in Washington DC and around every military base. Yikes! Hello NSA, DIA, FBI, CIA, INR and the rest of the alphabet soup of US intel agencies, is anyone doing counterintelligence anymore?
I thought exactly that, the very few agents who remain after passing their lie detector tests and having their social media sifted through and seeing if they (or a spouse) ever donated to a Democratic candidate or was ever in the audience for Jimmy Kimmel.
This would enable the attacker to essentially denial of service the entire area. Like what happens when a major concert happens and the local infrastructure is not ready for 50k people. Happens on occasion in Canada at our fireworks events.
Could you please tell us what reason you have to suspect this is actually related to any kind of attack or spying having anything to do with the UN. As I understand it everything involved is low grade commercial stuff that couldn't do anything like a MITM attack against cell phones.
Isn't the simplest explanation that this is just a run of the mill criminal fraud ring that happened to setup near the UN? It's not pretty but there is all sorts of criminal mischief you can get up to with the cellular network involving spam, phishing and impersonation.
I mean just look at the shit found with the comm gear. A baggie of coke. This isn't some group of disciplined foreign operatives it's some idiots trying to make a buck. Now that doesn't mean that they couldn't have posed a threat. An interested sophisticated party might well manipulate this kind of criminal enterprise into unwittingly helping them do something but it seems unlikely they are trying to have anything to do with the UN.
If you have evidence to the contrary that isn't merely what this material could be used for I'd love to hear it but short of that feels like secret service PR.
Great post, Ryan. I wonder if we should expect that this setup is duplicated in other large American cities, something that would allow a nationwide simultaneous event. Disturbing they would have got this far with a project this big before the SS stumbled on it.
The conspiratorial corner of my brain says there is more to this than just a text SPAM MILL aimed at the UN.
That appears to be a very costly setup. Who can afford to set up rig like that? I wonder how many more are situated in strategic places around the country just waiting for the right time to shut down communication.
On the other hand, maybe the dozens of political fund raising texts I get every day will now stop.
I’ll close off that part of my brain until the other shoe drops.
Why am I thinking that this was actually a US op and it got found by accident.
and now taking off the foil hat till we see what is what.
I thought that also, but then I realized that any government agency attempting to do this would have required billions of dollars and the project would be years behind schedule. 😜
Criminals bring in quite a bit of phishing/spam revenue. And remember this almost certainly wasn't procured at list prices. The kit almost certainly fell off a truck somewhere or got sold secondhand.
Ryan, thank you for making the ask for Ukraine. I'm in.
Happy Birthday Ryan, donated to the non-lethal aid to Ukraine using your link. I think you have vastly understated what was going on here. Some large nation/state actor somehow rented a bunch of apartments in a 35 mile range of NYC (that's difficult and expensive enough) and spent millions on 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers on racks (there are pictures) capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute? This effort represents millions of dollars, probably at least twenty to fifty coked up technicians and years of preparation. What's the FBI and the CIA been doing lately that they didn't notice this and the Secret Service had to find it? This is a massive expensive effort, one would safely assume whatever nation/state actor did this also did the same thing in Washington DC and around every military base. Yikes! Hello NSA, DIA, FBI, CIA, INR and the rest of the alphabet soup of US intel agencies, is anyone doing counterintelligence anymore?
Feds too busy pursuing immigrants and late night comedians.
I thought exactly that, the very few agents who remain after passing their lie detector tests and having their social media sifted through and seeing if they (or a spouse) ever donated to a Democratic candidate or was ever in the audience for Jimmy Kimmel.
New info: Homeland Security Investigations found an additional 200,000 SIM cards at a location in New Jersey https://abcnews.go.com/US/thwarted-plot-cripple-cell-service-ny-bigger-thought/story?id=126057249
I wouldn't put it past Russia either. This "hybrid" war thing is exactly what they like doing as well, especially in conjunction with China.
This would enable the attacker to essentially denial of service the entire area. Like what happens when a major concert happens and the local infrastructure is not ready for 50k people. Happens on occasion in Canada at our fireworks events.
Additionally having those unique sim cards likely let's the DDoS endpoints be indistinguishable from regular phones.
“Reagan would be 💣 by now” 🤣
Who did this? China, of course.
Happy Birthday! I sent money to the UA
Could you please tell us what reason you have to suspect this is actually related to any kind of attack or spying having anything to do with the UN. As I understand it everything involved is low grade commercial stuff that couldn't do anything like a MITM attack against cell phones.
Isn't the simplest explanation that this is just a run of the mill criminal fraud ring that happened to setup near the UN? It's not pretty but there is all sorts of criminal mischief you can get up to with the cellular network involving spam, phishing and impersonation.
I mean just look at the shit found with the comm gear. A baggie of coke. This isn't some group of disciplined foreign operatives it's some idiots trying to make a buck. Now that doesn't mean that they couldn't have posed a threat. An interested sophisticated party might well manipulate this kind of criminal enterprise into unwittingly helping them do something but it seems unlikely they are trying to have anything to do with the UN.
If you have evidence to the contrary that isn't merely what this material could be used for I'd love to hear it but short of that feels like secret service PR.
Great post, Ryan. I wonder if we should expect that this setup is duplicated in other large American cities, something that would allow a nationwide simultaneous event. Disturbing they would have got this far with a project this big before the SS stumbled on it.