If it was just another SMS spam service and they accidentally discovered it: Still thanks to those guys for actually doing the people and country a service.
Could those farms being used to overload services or cell towers? Maybe.
The substack article is off in a number of parameters. It talks about 100 SIMs and 20 broadband radios per device. Maybe this authors knowledge was a bit outdated, and he didn’t look closely at the pictures, which show a different picture.
Those trays had 256 sim cards each, and there were quite a lot of those boxes. And the device also has 256 antennae, which implies that it also has 256 broadband modules.
All in all a different thing than just rotating a number of SIM cards around to occasionally send an SMS. Assuming that those boxes have a closer grip on what the individual radio device does, a kind of coordinated action cannot be ruled out.
I think about the difference between early Bitcoin mining computers and professional mining equipment. At first people just used a desktop machine with a beefy graphics card. Then once people realized how much money was in it they iterated, and people started manufacturing devices custom designed for mining, and building operations in warehouses that were close to cheap power sources.
Same here, initially people have individual cell phones and are doing things manually, then they start to refund the process and use devices specifically made for that purpose, including arrays of sims which can be controlled centrally from a master computer. Just because it’s sophisticated doesn’t mean it’s a state actor or terrorism. (Of course still good it’s shut down)
If it was just another SMS spam service and they accidentally discovered it: Still thanks to those guys for actually doing the people and country a service.
Could those farms being used to overload services or cell towers? Maybe.
The substack article is off in a number of parameters. It talks about 100 SIMs and 20 broadband radios per device. Maybe this authors knowledge was a bit outdated, and he didn’t look closely at the pictures, which show a different picture.
Those trays had 256 sim cards each, and there were quite a lot of those boxes. And the device also has 256 antennae, which implies that it also has 256 broadband modules.
All in all a different thing than just rotating a number of SIM cards around to occasionally send an SMS. Assuming that those boxes have a closer grip on what the individual radio device does, a kind of coordinated action cannot be ruled out.
I think about the difference between early Bitcoin mining computers and professional mining equipment. At first people just used a desktop machine with a beefy graphics card. Then once people realized how much money was in it they iterated, and people started manufacturing devices custom designed for mining, and building operations in warehouses that were close to cheap power sources.
Same here, initially people have individual cell phones and are doing things manually, then they start to refund the process and use devices specifically made for that purpose, including arrays of sims which can be controlled centrally from a master computer. Just because it’s sophisticated doesn’t mean it’s a state actor or terrorism. (Of course still good it’s shut down)