At least as of today, most phones have an option to turn off 2g but that isn't a default.
Android has it as a toggle: https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/cellular-s...
iPhone disables it for phones in lockdown mode.
I wonder if this mostly hit international SIMs, since they wouldn’t be running the same level of SIM code to prefer various network locks like a local SIM.
Helps you stay under the radar and gov services over SMS is a lot more advanced outside of Canada if you want to do some fraud.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast
They are also interfering with connections and attempting downgrade attacks to do 2G SMS messages as well (and is likely where Canadian carriers were picking up the 'millions' of attacks against its network and failed authentication attempts).
Amusingly this was all also caught because of Telus reviewing those SMS messages that were reported as spam from people on iOS/Android and realizing that the messages weren't being terminated inside the cell network at all when they tried tracing them out and suspected that this was the case.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-sim-farms-like-the-o...
a) Doing some weird grey market VoIP thing. 32-in-1 GSM to SIP gateways have been a thing for a very long time in the developing world. Maybe they think they found some arbitrage route for phone traffic to/from the US PSTN that they can profit from. Anyone who interacts with grey market voip stuff will recognize these things immediately.
b) Using them for something like receiving 2FA authentication codes to create bot/socketpuppet social media accounts. In this sort of scenario they'd have live phone numbers/service and the cheapest possible phone plan, and ability to receive incoming SMS. The accounts then get provided to some other group of people who are doing mass advertising/social media manipulation.
> This wasn’t targeting a single individual or business. It had the ability to reach thousands of devices at once.
This statement reads as AI-assisted — kinda interesting to see, because I am not sure it even is? This type of formal speech language is basically unintelligible from slop now.
1. The Stingray eavesdrops, but avoids interfering with user traffic
2. The stingray is operated by law enforcement, not by fraudsters looking to steal your money
Like, the phones happily connect to these fake towers because the signal is strongest from that one and there is no authentication to verify who the tower belongs to, nor encryption of SMSes?