NYC Telecom Raid: What's Up with Those Weird SIM Banks?
47 comments
·September 23, 2025VladVladikoff
How can you have that many mobile radios in a small space without interference issues??
userbinator
CDMA is magic.
They're not all going to be transmitting at the same time either.
neuroelectron
This guy claims that it's not that suspicious and not a state-backed operation.
AnotherGoodName
Can’t read it since I don’t have a login there but i’m guessing they buy sims from all over the country and sms on matching prefixes since people will assume a local number is less likely to be spam.
This explains using such a bank. You want to cover as many prefixes as possible and you can’t match area codes with traditional sms services.
jghn
You can also see his takes on bsky [1] or h blog he posted there [2]
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/erratarob.bsky.social [2] https://cybersect.substack.com/p/that-secret-service-sim-far...
AnotherGoodName
The second link there is much more meaningful.
I actually did see the tweet in full it turns out. It's just that there's not much content so i figured "oh it's one of those twitter thread chains i can't read".
therein
Good post, also they use Quectel because it allows changing IMEI with a single AT command.
perching_aix
These days the way to go is social media proxies. A popular one is xcancel. Just replace the x in the domain with xcancel and you'll land on a proxy site (somebody's Nitter instance to be specific): https://xcancel.com/ErrataRob/status/1970586083374112784
Still not gonna help if you have cookies disabled because of the rate limiting, but hey.
dmd
I love how spammers do that- it works out great for me. I no longer live in my phones area code. I block the entire area code, which catches a huge amount of spam calls.
motoboi
You don't need a login to read a single tweet.
edoceo
Twitter is inconsistent for me. From the mobile (FF, not authenticated) it's blocked but from desktop (FF, not authenticated) is visible.
AnotherGoodName
Thanks! I was assuming it was a chain with more details than i saw there.
mike_d
I am very familiar with the hardware being used in that operation and Rob is 100% correct.
Someone used an online SMS service to send threatening messages to a member of the Gleichschaltung squad, and the secret service traced the SIM card back to one of these rented apartments. The reason it was linked to a "Chinese state sponsored blah blah blah" is because most Chinese criminal operations in the US have some indirect benefit to the Chinese government, which is why they are allowed to operate.
You could use this hardware to launch some sort of a flooding attack, but given the density all you are going to knock out is the one cell site all your devices are talking to. If China wanted to knock out cell service around the UN they would use the hundreds of thousands of backdoored Android phones in New York to launch a more distributed attack.
JackFr
I not familiar with any of it, so I’m willing to take your word, but doesn’t the scope raise some eyebrows?
Using the prices quoted in TFA they’re talking about $900,000 in servers and another $500,000 in SIM cards, before labor, rent and electricity.
Is that sort of outlay typical for phone scammers.
Also on a technical note is there an advantage to having all your sites in the NYC area? Is it simply that there’s enough cell traffic, the bad actors illicit traffic won’t stand out?
is_true
I thought it was someone running a mobile ip proxy
dilyevsky
"residential" proxies, ad clickbots, instagram/twitter bots - lots of "legit" use-cases these days
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d--b
Yeah thanks, that makes more sense. The devices probably are in New York because of the high antenna density which makes it easier to actually not jam the cell towers.
The secret service spun it as a terror threat in the same way your orthopedist tells you your teeth problem comes from bad posture.
I mean, the thing might be used to jam the networks (one would have to check that the devices still work when using all the antennas simultaneously), but that really sounds like an awful lot of effort for a disruption that’s neither guaranteed nor that distuptive. I mean, this would create some chaos for sure, but law enforcement and emergency services use radio to communicate. 99% of businessses use wired phones. So this would mostly affect what? deliveries?
A large scale spam operation is way more plaisible.
That the secret service is directly under Trump may also explain why they spun it as potential terrorism stuff. it’s part of their effort to make people believe that America is under terror threat, so that they can legitimize power grabbing…
billy99k
[flagged]
lovich
> This story is nonsense.
> It's just normal criminal enterprise for sending SMS spam and anonymous messages. Somebody used this service to send SMS threats to some politicians, so the Secret Service traced it back here. They are describing it as some special political threat ("35 mile radius from the UN") when it's just perfectly normal criminal enterprise.
> We know it's a crap story because to the way the New York Times story on this cites anonymous sources in the administration, and then James A. Lewis to confirm it. This guy, formerly of the CSIS think tank, is the the NYTimes regularly trots out to confirm cybersecurity claims by anonymous government officials.
> Ir's just normal crime folks, there's absolutely none of the threats here that they claim.
Why did you put quote marks around the word “legitimate”, like he said the word in his post?
boomboomsubban
>Why did you put quote marks around the word “legitimate”, like he said the word in his post?
They do say that in the associated blog post, though they don't seem to think it's likely to be legitimate. https://cybersect.substack.com/p/that-secret-service-sim-far...
Scoundreller
Maybe weird hardware, but easily available on aliexpress. Y’all need to explore more. Appears to be scrubbed off now but used to be more available.
Tbh, contraptions like this have a long history for gray-market VoIP call termination, but usually in countries where governments charge a lot for incoming international calls as means of fund-raising (or inefficient telecoms) but domestic rates are low.
Merge with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353925 ?
userbinator
It's like a multi-SIM phone, taken to the next level. Seeing this comment recently about ultra-cheap 4G LTE modems, I do wonder if one could make something cheaper with a bunch of those connected to a PC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45250676
crazygringo
For context, the original story from earlier today:
Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC (263 points, 251 comments)
est
the Chinese term for "SIM bank" is 猫池 (Modem pool)
it's mostly used to spam SMS and make fraud calls
leakycap
Such a cool write-up, I enjoyed the screenshots of the admin interfaces ... which look exactly as bad as I'd hoped
Sad to see Mobile-X MVNO as the preferred SIM in the photos shown, but I wonder if an MVNO has local-level data to detect a situation like this when hundreds of phones are in one area and don't move. Postpaid carriers running their own network might easily connect the dots between SIM/accounts/phone towers... but the piggyback nature of MVNO network management probably makes even detecting this behavior even harder.
rr808
Damn Mobile-X I hadn't heard of them but looks like a good deal. Maybe this is actually a marketing exercise?
leakycap
Tello isn't quite as cheap as Mobile-X, but for low use it is also great https://tello.com/buy/custom_plans
If you use an Apple Watch cellular, Verizon's Visible seems to be the best price currently but sadly doesn't have a pay-for-use option.
mike_d
> I wonder if an MVNO has local-level data to detect a situation like this when hundreds of phones are in one area and don't move
MVNOs don't care because they collect the profit without having to deal with any of the network issues. The carriers in turn only care when it impacts performance for legitimate customers, as they also see a piece of the pie.
leakycap
> MVNOs don't care
This is an excellent point
I assumed there would be anti-fraud measures blocking this kind of activity, but if this is a paying customer it isn't necessarily fraud/bad to the carrier or mvno
smoovb
The Secret Service is being overly alarmist, but to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
“We need to do forensics on 100,000 cell phones, essentially all the phone calls, all the text messages, anything to do with communications, see where those numbers end up,” "You can’t text message, you can’t use your cell phone. And if you coupled that with some sort of other event associated with UNGA, you know, use your imagination there, it could be catastrophic to the city."
So until we do our jobs, imagine the worst case scenario. Thanks guys.
Could be rent US a number service, data roaming, VOIP or SMS termination, account registration (google, tiktok, whatsapp).
There are data roaming services that use 5G GSM modems to transfer the SIMs tower connection to pocket wifi devices for tourists who need data.
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daft_pink
“One has to wonder if the rise of eSIMs is designed to make these products obsolete.“ or significantly reduce their labor costs.
I think this explains why the spam texts I receive never show up as an iMessage or rcs. This thing-a-ma-hugger doesn’t support it.
SchemaLoad
This seems like a pretty far fetched idea that phone manufacturers are pushing for esim to enable spammers to spam easier, rather than to free up space in phones for a bigger battery.
mike_d
> phone manufacturers are pushing for esim [...] rather than to free up space in phones for a bigger battery.
It is being pushed by the carriers because retail locations are their biggest overhead expense, for what is basically a place to go pick up a SIM card.
BobbyTables2
Agree.
Was never much a fan of eSIMs, but after seeing them in action, I kinda like it. Saved me inconvenient trips and delay.
Yes, it’d be nice to just be able to move a sim from one device to the next. In practice, I’ve only done that a few times in the past 20 years, about as often as I switch carriers. So, kinda a wash.
Hoping if phone suddenly breaks, can get new eSIM as easily.
SchemaLoad
Carriers are the slowest ones in the process though. Apple has had to drag them kicking and screaming on esim. Physical sims can be purchased in every supermarket. I'd guess the retail stores mostly exist for marketing and selling boomers on overpriced long term plans.
crtasm
I'm not sure it's viable to run large amounts of iMessage accounts, e.g. looking at https://bluebubbles.app/faq/ it needs a running MacOS machine/VM to work.
I used to have a machine that look like this(A bit smaller tho).
My machine was for...spamming text sms. We would put it on our vehicle and drive around the city to spam sms message.
We stop doing that now since it's not really effective anymore.
But our machine having same form factor does not mean they have same functionality.