They have images in the link. They sure don’t look like actual phones. I hope more information comes out about what was being used and where they were sourced. Were they devices that have a legitimate use as well or something more custom for nefarious purposes? They don’t look like they take a lot of room, so this might not be the last time we hear of something using this or similar equipment. Doesn’t seem like it would be hard to put these all over the world.
Why? Not disagreeing, just curious if there’s something to base this off of. It’s a whole lot of phones, but old phones are still perfectly functional and cheap as dirt in bulk. You can get 100-phone management racks off alibaba for not too much, so while this setup would be damned large, it’s for sure not impossible to set up for a dedicated enough actor.
And that said it’d be a pain in the ass. Could you replicate the functionality with a broadband radio and a server, maybe?
But a phone farm doesn’t necessarily use whole cellphones. All it really needs is the network chip and a sim unit for network authentication, and the hub would then power and control it all. The pictures in the article look like a phone farm of this sort, and I believe they’re correct in their assessment of its danger.
It’s pretty unlikely they were using actual cellphones for this setup.
They have images in the link. They sure don’t look like actual phones. I hope more information comes out about what was being used and where they were sourced. Were they devices that have a legitimate use as well or something more custom for nefarious purposes? They don’t look like they take a lot of room, so this might not be the last time we hear of something using this or similar equipment. Doesn’t seem like it would be hard to put these all over the world.
Why? Not disagreeing, just curious if there’s something to base this off of. It’s a whole lot of phones, but old phones are still perfectly functional and cheap as dirt in bulk. You can get 100-phone management racks off alibaba for not too much, so while this setup would be damned large, it’s for sure not impossible to set up for a dedicated enough actor.
And that said it’d be a pain in the ass. Could you replicate the functionality with a broadband radio and a server, maybe?
There are images in the link; they’re not actual phones.
You don’t need phones. They are emulated. Better to call it a SIM farm but phone farm is good enough a term colloquially.
But a phone farm doesn’t necessarily use whole cellphones. All it really needs is the network chip and a sim unit for network authentication, and the hub would then power and control it all. The pictures in the article look like a phone farm of this sort, and I believe they’re correct in their assessment of its danger.