That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Skepticism about the “UN cyber‑espionage” narrative

  • Many commenters see the Secret Service/NYT framing as exaggerated: the hardware is real, but the “threat to the UN” and “citywide network crash” angles are viewed as PR spin.
  • The 35‑mile distance from UN HQ is repeatedly mocked as meaningless in RF/SMS terms and clearly chosen to sensationalize.
  • Several argue this looks like a standard, profit‑oriented criminal operation (spam, scams, grey‑route telephony) that happened to be near NYC, not a bespoke nation‑state plot.

What SIM farms are probably doing

  • Commonly cited uses:
    • SMS spam and scam campaigns (phishing, fraud, swatting threats).
    • VoIP “grey routes” to bypass international termination fees by turning IP calls into local mobile calls.
    • Ad fraud, “phone farms” for app installs, SEO/“organic traffic”, ticketing scams, and bulk account registrations.
    • Mobile and residential proxy networks used for scraping and evasion.
  • Some note the hardware in the photos looks like classic bulk SMS/voice gateways, not surveillance gear.

Technical debate: can this crash towers or aid espionage?

  • Several telecom‑savvy participants say: all SMS/calls still traverse core telco systems; proximity to a victim or to the UN doesn’t give special access or let you bypass filters.
  • Opinion splits on DDoS potential:
    • One side: many SIMs in one cell can overload local radio resources and intermittently knock out a sector.
    • Others: NYC infrastructure and the farm’s scale make “citywide” outages implausible; compared to stadium crowds, it’s not enormous.
  • Using cellular rather than Wi‑Fi is seen as a way to avoid IP‑based detection (no giant VPN cluster, no obvious single IP), at the cost of buying lots of cheap SIMs.

Legality, carriers, and enforcement

  • Debate over what’s actually illegal: owning racks of modems isn’t; spam, threats, and bypass fraud are.
  • Some stress there’s no public evidence yet tying this specific farm to concrete crimes; others point out the Secret Service was already chasing threat calls.
  • Commenters argue carriers could easily detect such patterns but profit incentives and lax ToS enforcement mean they mostly look away.

Media, anonymous sources, and propaganda concerns

  • Many see the NYT piece as classic law‑enforcement “copaganda”: unattributed security officials, worst‑case hypotheticals presented as news, and low technical scrutiny.
  • Others defend anonymity as standard practice when discussing ongoing investigations, and criticize the blog author’s blanket dismissal of such sourcing as simplistic.
  • Broader discussion veers into how major outlets amplify government narratives, the “Washington Game” of official leaks, and the difficulty of trusting any single source.

Reception of the Substack critique

  • A lot of commenters agree with its core claim: this was almost certainly “ordinary crime hyped as espionage.”
  • However, several criticize the post’s absolutist tone (“bogus”, “trust me I’m a hacker”), some technical nitpicks, and its own speculative leaps.
  • The prevailing view in the thread: the government and NYT oversold a routine SIM farm bust; the blog usefully de‑inflates that, but also overstates its own certainty.