[alansammarone]

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, presenting evidence and trying to make a case for their conclusion, I usually apply a different standard. From them, I expect sound reasoning, which often requires a form of independence/neutrality that news organizations don't have.

And let's just say this article is not exactly structured as a sequence of QEDs, so to speak. It doesn't seem like the conclusions follow from the premisses. That's not to say it's wrong, just that if it is right, it would be in part by accident.

[matthewdgreen]

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.

[firesteelrain]

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.

[tsimionescu]

The NYT article fell apart the moment they quoted the silly "35 miles from UN headquarters" quote by the SS without pointing out it's an absurd attempt at sensationalizing. No need to read further than that before figuring out it's a propaganda piece.

[1234letshaveatw]

That's the figure that has been cherry picked and everyone has run with to dismiss the announcement yes. While it probably was included to sensationalize, I fail to see how that is some kind of smoking gun that somehow falsifies all the rest of it. Everyone buying into this is showing their bias

[tsimionescu]

The title of the NYT article is "Cache of Devices Capable of Crashing Cell Network is Found Near U. N.". The 35 mile radius is not some cherry picked number buried deep in the article, it is the explanation of the propagandiatic title. And the other parts of the title are also bullshit: it wasn't a "cache", which would suggest the devices were stockpiled waiting for some nefarious purpose - they were actively used devices. And describing SIM farms as "devices capable of crashing the cell network" is also bullshit - it's like finding a box of knives in a kitchen drawer and describing it as "a cache of implements capable of tearing human flesh".

[1234letshaveatw]

"The reality is that this is just a normal criminal threat that sometimes crashes cell towers. SMS is an ancient technology that works slowly even in modern cell networks. Too many SIM boxes spamming SMS in one location can indeed overwhelm a cell tower" Are you agreeing with Cybersect or not?

[averageRoyalty]

I just read the article and it's clearly implying foreign powers attempting to sabotage a UN meeting.

The two "experts" clearly have no idea what they're talking about, and the agent quoted is implying heavily that this is some form of criminal, organised ring.

In reality, SIM farms are against the ToS for phone providers and can definitely be used for illegal activity such as telecommunications disruptions, but a butter knife can also be used for illegal activity.

I've run data centres and seen them set up in many places, operators I've seen are there for a profit and operating in a technically legal area but playing cat and mouse with the telcos. There is nothing implicitly illegal about them.

[wat10000]

It's the most obvious example, it's not the sole piece of evidence.

Let's pick through the official statement.

"In addition to carrying out anonymous telephonic threats, these devices could be used to conduct a wide range of telecommunications attacks. This includes disabling cell phone towers, enabling denial of services attacks and facilitating anonymous, encrypted communication between potential threat actors and criminal enterprises."

This is a mix of bullshit and mundane. Disabling cell towers? I don't buy it. DoS attacks? Yeah, any collection of internet-connected devices can do that. Anonymous, encrypted communication? Everybody's smartphone qualifies for that. You could be talking about arresting a pickpocketer and be technically correct in saying that you siezed a device that could be used to facilitate anonymous, encrypted communication between potential threat actors and criminal enterprises.

"While forensic examination of these devices is ongoing, early analysis indicates cellular communications between nation-state threat actors and individuals that are known to federal law enforcement."

So some foreign government was using these services. You could say the same about AWS.

"The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated"

A nice example of the genre of self-disproving statements.

"These devices were concentrated within 35 miles of the global meeting of the United Nations General Assembly now underway in New York City."

It bears repeating that "within 35 miles" of the UN includes the entire New York metro area and a large area beyond. In addition to that, the very concept of electronic equipment being "concentrated within" four thousand square miles doesn't make the least bit of sense.

[rpdillon]

This is exactly right. Another note: they tried to time the announcement with Trump's speech - the actual devices were found weeks ago. The NYT article mentions August in the same sentence it mentions the 35 miles.

The cherry on top is that at the end of the article, they sort of let it slip that this isn't something that they expect would be unusual:

> “This is an ongoing investigation, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe we won’t find more of these devices in other cities,” Mr. McCool said.

[1234letshaveatw]

those are absurd interpretations, "nation-state threat actors and individuals that are known to federal law" = some foreign country? give me a break

[brk]

DDoS the tower? These look like they represent less than the aggregate crowd at MSG, or even a fairly dense office building (of which there are plenty in NYC). Didn't seem like enough to launch a coordinated DDoS attack. Also, just from looking at the base units, it appears the ratio of SIMs to radios/antennas is Many:1, so not all SIMs can be leveraged in a DDoS at any singular time.

[mfro]

Somehow I doubt telecom infrastructure in NYC is susceptible enough to completely drop service citywide when under attack from one DDoS source. In fact, I suppose this is technically just DoS, because all these SIMs should be served by 1, maybe 2 towers.

[ruszki]

I don’t know whether it’s possible with modern networks, but it was basically impossible to DDoS a tower with SMSs. Either the tower was unavailable at all times even without text messages, or SMSs never caused a problem. You couldn’t even send many text messages at once, it took a while to send say 50 SMSs, like minutes. I know that the tech stack is different nowadays, but it really depends on prioritisation, which I don’t know much about.

[alansammarone]

Ok, that makes sense. I couldn't quite fish that out of the article (there's a lot more being said that obscures it), but you're right. If this is indeed relatively common (at this scale and/or level of sophistication), then that definitely would make it much more likely that this is a PR stunt. Not completely settled, but much more likely.

[joe_the_user]

Article's subheading is "it's just an ordinary crime". It seem comparable to a situation where you have a gang with a huge weapon cache that gets found and the press says "enough fire power to outgun the police" and someone says "dude, they weren't aiming for the police, just their rivals".

Sure, the press may put a "threat to the nation" spin on things that might be a bit sensational. But the "you're making something out of nothing" claims seem to do the opposite. Criminals with the ability to cause widespread chaos seem worrying even if their may motivation is maintaining their income stream.

[skybrian]

That sounds plausible, but could you link to those technical experts? I never heard of the author of this blog and he’s all “trust me I’m a hacker.”

[55555]

It's not complicated. This is a normal sort of criminal enterprise. These rooms filled with SIM boxes are all over the world. The owners of them rent out the service to others -- letting them send 1,000 spam messages for a fee. One of the buyers of the service was indeed using it to threaten a politician. But this represents a tiny fraction (less than 1% of 1% of the SIMs normal use -- which is probably mostly phishing messages and other spam). It is a criminal enterprise and was used as some sort of political threat, but it's probably not set up by Russia or intended for that purpose.

[ecocentrik]

These enterprises might not be setup by Russia directly but they might be setup by Russian criminal organizations which have been very active in the US over the last 20 years. That nobody in the current administration seem to be concerned with criminal organizations outside of some small or remnant groups from Latin America is very telling all on its own. This administration has never named any Russian gangs in official statements, even while they now dominate in some parts of the US.

[aerostable_slug]

That's easily falsifiable. Trump's DOJ and Treasury have multiple press releases regarding prosecutions and sanctions against Vory v zakone, thieves-in-law. Just search on either phrase and you'll see them.

Additionally, calling Venezuelan and Mexican cartels like CJNG small or remnant is extremely inaccurate, to be charitable. They are among the largest, best equipped, and most dangerous organized criminals in the world. You don't have be pro-Trump to acknowledge this fact.

[notatoad]

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 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.

That’s all the author is asking us to believe.

[lxgr]

> 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.

[singpolyma3]

Unfortunately that's part of the reason sim farms exist.

[klausa]

> 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.

It's always funny to see comments like this; because there's always at least 50/50 chance that the article is from someone that is actually prolific, just that the person has a blind-spot for whatever reason.

That is, also, the case here.

[notatoad]

Yeah, sometimes the random substack is from somebody really respected, and sometimes it’s just from somebody who writes like they think they should be really respected. And sometimes the respectable people can be wrong too.

But I think it’s wrong to call it a “blind spot”. This is not my industry, I don’t know the names, and I’m not qualified to judge whether the author deserves my implicit trust. So I treat this substack with the same skepticism I would any other substack.

[disiplus]

yeah, like you go on alibaba and can get them right away. i was even thinking about them like 10 years ago when we had to send transactional sms to our customers to get one instead of paying for somebodies sms gateway.

https://www.made-in-china.com/showroom/faf448fd0d906a15/prod...

[kcplate]

The article for me was weird in the sense that it makes the claim that the purpose was of the farms were not necessarily nefarious in a terror sense, but merely criminal. Even suggesting that they could be legitimate (that was a stretch, sim farms in residential apartments? Please.).

It also makes the point that its purpose wasn’t to disrupt cell service, although these things can and will disrupt cell services.

So from my perspective, the article is strange in the sense that the author seems pretty intent on splitting enough hairs to prove the secret service wrong. For me, I don’t care if they are wrong about its purpose— If this helps decrease spam messages, great. If it means that cell services are now more reliable in that area, great. If it’s something that could be hijacked and used for terroristic purposes and has now been neutralized, great.

[DangitBobby]

If the secret service were involved in policing that had nothing to do with national security, that might be worth reporting on. We should be wary of the expansion of their policing duties.

[frankharv]

Rack mounts of cellular gear in an apartment. Dummy rentals. I don't understand the optimism.

How did this not throw flags with the carriers.

[kcplate]

If a SS advance team for Trump’s UN address were following up on a lead that was based off detected unusual cell activity in the area…seems to me like that would have been within their responsibility profile.

[hakfoo]

We need to be especially careful about labeling things a terror threat during the current inflamed security and political situation.

"Freddy No-Lips is burning down Suzy's Bakery because she didn't pay protection money" is not the Reichstag fire and should not be weaponized like it was.

[r3trohack3r]

I believe the kind of journalism you’re hinting at is practically dead in what many people are referring to when they say “the news.” It’s hard to determine if I agree with your stance though since you didn’t actually define what you meant by news organizations; mind listing a few of your favorite sources of news and trusted commentators? If they’re quite good, it’ll help people find reliable sources of descriptive accuracy!

But a meta point: Most commercial news rooms have become propoganda arms for The Party that churn out low effort AP ticker derivatives, social media gossip, and literal government propaganda from The Party whispered in their ear by an “anonymous source.” The “news rooms” appear devoid of any real journalistic integrity.

I think we are going to see an increasing trend of “true journalists” leaving the legacy news industry to places where they can build direct relationships with their audience, can own their own content distribution channels, and directly monetize those channels. I.E. Substack, YouTube, X, et. al.

[palmotea]

> I think we are going to see an increasing trend of “true journalists” leaving the legacy news industry to places where they can build direct relationships with their audience, can own their own content distribution channels, and directly monetize those channels. I.E. Substack, YouTube, X, et. al.

Those independent channels seem far more amenable to "opinion-havers" than "true journalists" (though perhaps the "true journalists" transform into opinion-havers or secondhand-analysts when they change distribution platforms).

> ...churn out low effort AP ticker derivatives, social media gossip, and literal government propaganda from The Party whispered in their ear by an “anonymous source.”

That stuff is cheap. How do you expect someone moving to a place of fewer resources and less security to make a more expensive product?

> The “news rooms” appear devoid of any real journalistic integrity.

I think you're seeing the result of budget cuts.

[tsimionescu]

> That stuff is cheap. How do you expect someone moving to a place of fewer resources and less security to make a more expensive product?

Investigative journalism is really not that expensive. A lot of it boils down to needing a phone and money for gas. Rather than costs, the much bigger obstacle to good journalism is censorship, much of it coming from company leadership, which doesn't want a bad relationship with advertisers or the government.

[palmotea]

> Investigative journalism is really not that expensive. A lot of it boils down to needing a phone and money for gas.

Come on. It investigative journalism takes a lot of time, and in the mean time, the journalist has bills to pay.

An opinion-haver or second-hand news analyst can build a Substack following by picking a theme and pumping out a blog post every couple days, but that's not practical for someone who might only be able put out a story every couple months on varying topics (based on whatever scoops they get).

[r3trohack3r]

I suspect the economics of investigative journalism work out better for an individual who is personally invested in their work.

Your scenario is the same for a news company. Investigative journalism takes time. And, in the meantime, you have HR departments, corporate rent, etc., you’re trying to build a media empire and your ROI is being compared against just investing in the S&P 500.

And I don’t think the economics of corporate news make sense. I suspect people buy these news rooms because their ROI comes from manufacturing consent (power and influence) - not monetizing investigative journalism.

[palmotea]

> I suspect the economics of investigative journalism work out better for an individual who is personally invested in their work.

> Your scenario is the same for a news company. Investigative journalism takes time. And, in the meantime, you have HR departments, corporate rent, etc., you’re trying to build a media empire and your ROI is being compared against just investing in the S&P 500.

No. In the mean time, you have opinion-havers and other investigative journalists writing articles, maintaining a steady audience. An "individual [investigative journalist] who is personally invested in their work" wouldn't have the steady output to maintain one.

> And I don’t think the economics of corporate news make sense.

The economics of solo news make even less sense.

[tsimionescu]

The point isn't that it's cheaper to do investigative journalism than opinion pieces. The point was whether it's easier to do IJ independently or as part of a big news corporation. And I firmly believe that big news corps are mostly actively against IJ, so that going independent is the only real way to practice it.

[palmotea]

> The point was whether it's easier to do IJ independently or as part of a big news corporation....so that going independent is the only real way to practice it.

I think you're pushing a fantasy. I don't think "going independent" is really viable for a person unless they 1) have pre-existing fame, 2) independent wealth (or a patron), or 3) cut corners with the project in some way.

[WastedCucumber]

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.

[xtiansimon]

“…which often requires a form of independence/neutrality that news organizations don't have.”

Really? I see a difference between 24h infotainment news and News.

The News I listen to (AM radio) is compacted into fact, point, counterpoint. And that’s it. When it repeats, no more news. I’m old enough to remember this basic News playbook, and it’s not changed on those stations I listen to.

[alansammarone]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm with you. I just meant more broadly - I think that inevitably, news organizations, as a whole, have more many competing interests - comercial, political, etc. I think that at least some of them at really trying their best to deliver accurate, factual claims. I'm generally less inclined to read opinion pieces, but I certainly get my news from the News, and I have a huge respect for honest journalists. I think they're one of the most under appreciated professions of our age.

[nixosbestos]

[flagged]

[tomhow]

Please don't comment like this on HN. These guidelines in particular, ask us to avoid commenting like this:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...

Please don't post shallow dismissals...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[nixosbestos]

Cute that another (days+ old) comment of mine was down-modded and flagged at the exact same time you wrote this. You know, the one that stated literal facts and nothing else.

I legitimately read the comment twice and couldn't parse it when I wrote this. I wasn't trying to be rude, I genuinely didn't understand. But pretty sure you don't care. But sure, point taken.

[tomhow]

I didn't touch any "days+ old" comments. I did flag another comment of yours from about the same time as the one I replied to, but several other community members had already downvoted and flagged it, so I'm not taking any unilateral action here. I'm only seeing your comments because so many community members are flagging them.

> You know, the one that stated literal facts and nothing else

I don't know what comment you're referring to, but it's common for people to claim that they were "just stating facts", whilst sidestepping the fact that the choice of "facts", the context in which they are invoked and the words used to state them can very easily be inflammatory.

> I wasn't trying to be rude, I genuinely didn't understand

It's common for people to underestimate how harshly their words come across by the time they hit the page for others to read. We've had to warn you before, and you're still frequently making comments that are breaking the guidelines and being flagged by many fellow community members. You need to try harder to keep within the guidelines if you want to participate here. This is only a place where people want to participate because others make the effort to keep the standards up. We need to see you making an effort to be one of the ones to raise the standards, rather than repeatedly dragging them down.

> But pretty sure you don't care

My job is to uphold the guidelines and do what I can to keep this place from burning to the ground. That's all I care about when I'm posting comments like these.

> But sure, point taken

I hope so!

[glenstein]

I understood them perfectly so I'm not sure what you're talking about. It's a thoughtful high-level overview about the difference between authoritative factual communication and vibes-based speculation. I made a similar point in a thread yesterday about the various disorganized allegations of "fraud" attributed to MrBeast and how they rarely cohere into a clearly articulated harm.

I think scatterbrained, vibes based almost-theories that vaguely imitate real arguments but don't actually have the logical structure, are unfortunately common and important to be able to recognize. This article gets a lot of its rhetorical momentum from simply declaring it's fake and putting "experts" in scare quotes over and over. It claims the article is "bogus" while agreeing that the sim cards are real, were really found, really can crash cell towers, and can hide identities. It also corrects things that no one said (neither the tweet nor the NYT article they link to refer to the cache of sim cards as "phones" yet the substack corrects this phrasing).

The strongest argument makes is about the difference between espionage and cell tower crashing and the achievability of this by non state actors (it would cost "only" $1MM for anyone to do this), but a difference in interpretation is a far cry from the article actually being bogus. And the vagueposting about how quoting "high level experts" proves that the story is fake is so ridiculous I don't even know what to say. Sure, the NYT have preferred sources who probably push preferred narratives, but if you think that's proof of anything you don't know the difference between vibes and arguments.

So I completely understand GPs point and wish more comments were reacting in the same way.

[alansammarone]

...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 not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.

[Brendinooo]

>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.

[amiga386]

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't get in trouble with anyone at the agency for saying what the agency told them to say to the press. The NYT could just say "officials said" and not name them.

It is not like there is a whistleblower inside the Secret Service with scuttlebutt to dish, and the NYT need to protect the identity of Deep Throat 2.0... and all they had to say was the spam operation itself didn't pose any threat to the UN conference.

I think what the blog author's arguing is that this phrase is unnecessary detail that just adds intrigue to sell a rather mundane story.

[eagleal]

I don't know about US laws, but in most countries agencies/PMs/experts or whoever has access and is involved in the investigation, cannot make a comment if the investigation is ongoing.

Breaching of this, especially as you're making a case, in most cases at best would invalidate the whole case + bring disciplinary actions upon the individual(s) that committed the breach.

Judging by the other comments, looks similar for the US too.

If you're ever partecipated as expert in any investigation or news article you'd know you'd get usually biased hypothesis, if otherwise it meant you wouldn't have the same impact for the news story. Or if you've ever heard of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.