On: Stealth Cell Tower Disguised as Printer

[brotherjerky]

> Masquerading as a regular cellular service provider, Stealth Cell Tower surreptitiously catches phones and sends them SMSs written to appear they are from someone that knows the recipient. It does this without needing to know any phone numbers.

Pretty witty, but how does this work? Does it wait for the user to send a message and snoop?

[schwarrrtz → brotherjerky]

No. The devices automatically connect to the base station with the strongest available signal.

[vosper → schwarrrtz]

That doesn't explain how the SMS message comes from someone the user knows. I would assume (and I think this is what GP was getting at) that the fake tower snoops on outgoing messages in order to collect numbers that the user has in their address book, and then spoofs a message from that number?

[vbit → vosper]

> SMSs written to appear they are from someone that knows the recipient

I don't think this means they are sent from numbers known to the recipient. Only that the content is written such that it appears to be from someone who knows the recipient.

I don't know if actual spoofing is possible.

[schwarrrtz → vbit]

Yeah, if you look at the codebase it just selects a random string from an array of prewritten messages and sends that.

[jdmichal → schwarrrtz]

I believe the question was "how do they form text messages from believable senders", not "how do they hijack the phone signal".