Daily Tech News 4 October 2025

• Thwarted plot to cripple cell service in NY was bigger than first thought unless it wasn't: Sources. (ABC)
  
  Over on the sidebar you'll find a link by CBD to an article about a planned attack against communications infrastructure in New York City, discovered and averted twelve days ago by the Secret Service.
  
  They found 100,000 activated SIM cards and over 300 specialised (and, in the US, illegal) SIM servers set up to use them, in a handful of rented locations in the city, capable of sending out thirty million SMS messages per minute and overwhelming and crippling nearby cell towers.
  
  The latest update us that the Secret Service has found another 200,000 SIM cards in another location nearby in New Jersey.
  
  So the question is, who was behind this rather sophisticated plot, and what were they hoping to achieve? The Secret Service links it to China, which is probably true but only at the surface level.
  
  Most likely this wasn't a nation-state planning a terror attack at all, but an organised crime ring using those hundreds of thousands of numbers to make scam calls. The hardware was probably smuggled from China, but not to declare war, just to make an illicit buck.
  
  That's speculation, but what we know for sure - because it put the Secret Service on the track in the first place - is that this same network was used in swatting attacks against members of Congress in December of 2023.
  
  And it would be foolish of a nation-state actor to allow such an elaborate plot to be foiled over such a minor and secondary objective. Though dumber things have happened.
  
  
  
• Second pass at today's thread because my computer decided to reboot right when I was looking for the video for the interlude and I hadn't saved yet. That'll teach me.
  
  * Spoiler: It didn't teach them.
  

• I turned the Lego Game Boy into a working Game Boy. (Natalie the Nerd)
  
  Someone needs to get Natalie the Lego Millennium Falcon, stat.
  
  
  
• OpenAI is now worth $500 billion, making it the world's most valuable startup. (Yahoo)
  
  For the first half of this year, OpenAI lost $13.5 billion on revenues of $4.3 billion.
  
  
  
• RedHat has announced that "an unauthorized third party had accessed and copied some data from a Red Hat Consulting-managed, dedicated GitLab instance". (The Register)
  
  "Some data" turns out to be 28,000 Git repositories.
  
  Quite a lot, really.
  
  
  
• Who would be silly enough to sign up for OpenAI's new social network when all it has to offer is an unending stream of AI slop? (The Verge) (archive site)
  
  Oh. A writer for The Verge. Yes, that checks out.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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