U.S. Secret Service Seizes 300 SIM Servers, 100K Cards – You’re Kidding Me, Right?

Oh joy. More incompetence. The US Secret Service just “seized” (like they *found* them, not proactively stopped anything) 300 freakin’ SIM servers and a hundred thousand SIM cards. Apparently, some assholes were planning to use these to impersonate U.S. officials during the UN General Assembly. Like, really subtle plan there, geniuses.

The whole operation was traced back to… wait for it… *Canada*. Canada! Seriously? You’d think they’d have better things to do than try and screw with our government. They claim this could have been used for SMS-based account takeovers and other delightful scams. No shit, Sherlock.

The servers were running some shady software (surprise, surprise) and the whole thing was discovered thanks to… wait for it again… a tip from a mobile carrier. So basically, they only found this because someone *else* did the work. Fantastic security posture, guys. Absolutely stellar.

They’re now “investigating” (read: scrambling to figure out how this even happened) and trying to assess the damage. I’m sure it will be a complete disaster. Expect more headlines about compromised accounts and panicked officials. Don’t hold your breath for actual preventative measures, though.

Source: The Hacker News

Speaking of SIM swaps, I once had to deal with a user who lost their phone and *insisted* the carrier reactivate it for them without proper verification. Spent three hours explaining multi-factor authentication and why giving a random person access to their account was a terrible idea. They still tried to argue. Some people just want to watch the world burn, I swear.

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