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Attempt To Cripple NY Cell Phone Service

At this point, any 'musings' by the US government or any of its officials can be safely dismissed as purely imaginative...

(seriously- given the number of trump appointees in all government departments and their total lack of spines or morals- would YOU believe anything coming out any US government department at all at the moment???)

Given trumps hatred of the Chinese (not exactly confined to him either, its a national trait of many US people), I'm not surprised in the least that anything they can think of is blamed on them

Hell I'm surprised they haven't blamed hurricanes on them...
(or autism lol- its the Chinese Tylenol causing it lol)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...tism-is-it-what-the-science-says/86297505007/
So yeah- I give the 'Secret Service' story exactly the same level of credence as the JFK one...
As in zero....
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plague311 said:
... The article seems to point out, almost repeatedly, that these are commonly used for financial crimes rather than taking down city networks, cell towers, etc.
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I wonder if this is just a fake phone number farm. New and unaffiliated numbers for rent by the dozen to send whatever scam message you want (or legit message, I'm sure the seller doesn't care).
 
Jack by the hedge said:
I wonder if this is just a fake phone number farm. New and unaffiliated numbers for rent by the dozen to send whatever scam message you want (or legit message, I'm sure the seller doesn't care).
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That's pretty much what Lizard Squad did with their LOC. You'd plug in a payment method (generally crypto), put a URL in that you wanted DDOS'd, and hit go.
 
A PBS news report sheds some more light on this. Apparently the Secret Service got involved because of their role in providing protection for visiting heads of state or government.
While close to 150 world leaders prepared to descend on Manhattan for the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. Secret Service was quietly dismantling a massive hidden telecom network across the New York area — a system investigators say could have crippled cell towers, jammed 911 calls and flooded networks with chaos at the very moment the city was most vulnerable. PBS news report link
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The five sites raided were all within a 35-mile radius of Manhattan. The four locations identified were a vacant apartment in Queens, a business park in Armonk, NY, in Greenwich, Conn. and an undisclosed location in northern New Jersey. The number of sites make this seem a bit unusual.
 
It's interesting that a network-crushing number of SIM cards can be active in the same cell(s) without the carrier(s) noticing that they're at risk.

It's going to be hilarious if someone lost their phone farm for hire, because someone hired it to threaten the president.
 
newyorkguy said:
The Secret Service announced yesterday it had discovered, and deactivated, a covert network that could potentially have crippled cell phone service in the New York City area.


ABC News reported that the system could have sent 30 million text messages per minute, completely jamming cellular service. ABC also reports investigators have linked the operation to the Chinese government. That sounds plausible except for the setup being used to threaten senior U.S. officials and the discovery of 80 grams of cocaine. Could a drug cartel have actually been behind this?
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Eighty grams of cocaine is the amount a low- to mid-level dealer might have available on a Friday night. It's next to nothing.
 
A USA Today news report from last December, in the waning days of the Biden Administration, gives some background on this, including the involvement of China.
The White House is urging the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on U.S. telecom providers after at least nine were breached in a massive Chinese hacking and spying campaign that targeted senior government officials...Federal authorities first acknowledged the hack in October. After investigating they revealed weeks later that "a broad and significant cyber espionage campaign" by the Chinese government had taken place...The U.S. government does not know how many people were impacted, [security adviser Anne] Neuberger said. But it is their understanding that "a large number" of individuals in the Washington, D.C. area and Virginia were geolocated, with the aim of identifying who the phones belonged to for "follow on espionage and intelligence collection of communications, of texts and phone calls." USA Today article link
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In the wake of the initial investigation, last November the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued the following statement which specifically cites Chinese government involvement.
The U.S. government's continued investigation into the People's Republic of China (PRC) targeting of commercial telecommunications infrastructure has revealed a broad and significant cyber espionage campaign. Specifically, we have identified that PRC-affiliated actors have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies to enable the theft of customer call records data, the compromise of private communications of a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or political activity, and the copying of certain information that was subject to U.S. law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders. We expect our understanding of these compromises to grow as the investigation continues. CISA statement link
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theprestige said:
It's interesting that a network-crushing number of SIM cards can be active in the same cell(s) without the carrier(s) noticing that they're at risk.
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I think they're embellishing the risk to cell networks, myself. NYC is over 8 million people and that hardware looked to have maybe a few hundred a piece. I'd think a cell network that's handling millions could handle an influx of thousands without much of a problem.
 
theprestige said:
It's interesting that a network-crushing number of SIM cards can be active in the same cell(s) without the carrier(s) noticing that they're at risk...
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Apparently the telecommunications companies do not have very good security against these kinds of risks. The White House's deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, Anne Neuberger, addressed this issue back in December. She was critical of the telecommunication companies lack of adequate network security.

"Chinese hackers were careful about their techniques," Neuberger added. "They erased logs. In many cases, companies were not keeping adequate logs," she said. "So there are details that likely ... we will never know regarding the scope and scale of this." USA Today article link
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At that time, both the FBI and CISA urged the companies to improve network security, while the Biden Administration urged the FCC to mandate better network security. How much has changed, I wonder?
 
A 4G cell can only sustain a couple of thousand users and that's with most of them not making calls most of the time. Busy events like festival sites now always get multiple popup towers to add more capacity for the crowd, now that everyone lives on their phone.

5G towers, although generally much shorter range, have an advantage that they can deal with a lot more simultaneous users.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
A 4G cell can only sustain a couple of thousand users and that's with most of them not making calls most of the time. Busy events like festival sites now always get multiple popup towers to add more capacity for the crowd, now that everyone lives on their phone.

5G towers, although generally much shorter range, have an advantage that they can deal with a lot more simultaneous users.
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I would imagine NYC is almost entirely 5G, but I wonder if, to your point, they would specifically target a 4G band.
 
plague311 said:
I think they're embellishing the risk to cell networks, myself. NYC is over 8 million people and that hardware looked to have maybe a few hundred a piece. I'd think a cell network that's handling millions could handle an influx of thousands without much of a problem.
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Sure, and banks with more than enough reserves for normal business operations can totally handle a run. /s
 
theprestige said:
Sure, and banks with more than enough reserves for normal business operations can totally handle a run. /s
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I said they were embellishing, not that there was no risk of a cell network being impacted. I just don't believe it would be to the extent the articles were claiming.
theprestige said:
It's easier?
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Maybe, hell if I know. I do infrastructure networking and virtualization. Cell bands and what's easier or not easier to target is out of my realm.
theprestige said:
My carrier actually required an extra activation step, to enable 5G service for my 5G phone.
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Makes sense. The phone needs to know which band to connect to. I am on the first responders network so I believe my phone just connects to the first, fastest and most stable network. I think it's technically AT&T, but it's a completely separate band. Firstnet I think it's called.
 
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