←back to thread

FBI cyber cop: Salt Typhoon pwned 'nearly every American'

(www.theregister.com)
287 points Bender | 9 comments | 30 Aug 25 12:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.215s | source | bottom
Show context
nekitamo ◴[30 Aug 25 15:11 UTC] No.45075341[source]▶
This is what we get for installing mandatory government backdoors all over our communications infrastructure. Unbelievable that such a critical piece of infrastructure wasn't secured properly. But after the OPM hack and the bungled implementation of CIA "drop sites" online, nothing about our government's cyber incompetence surprises me anymore.
replies(3): >>45075621 #>>45075962 #>>45076589 #
dlcarrier ◴[30 Aug 25 15:47 UTC] No.45075621[source]▶
I'm really tempted to stop using phone numbers, altogether. The security is really bad, and phone numbers are used for identification almost as often as social security numbers, but there's no requirement to have one.
replies(1): >>45075691 #
jacquesm ◴[30 Aug 25 15:57 UTC] No.45075691[source]▶
Technically not. But not having a working phone number will quickly become a problem when you need to interact with authorities, banks, insurance companies, the legal system etc. I remember when cell phones were becoming affordable and I thought I was clever by ditching my land line. That got me no end of trouble, then bit by bit it became more normalized to the point that if you have a landline now people look at you a little funny. Not having a phone number today would be the same as not having a landline would have been in the early 90's, and probably much worse than not having a phone was back then.
replies(3): >>45075911 #>>45076936 #>>45078864 #
1. latchkey ◴[30 Aug 25 16:30 UTC] No.45075911[source]▶
Even worse is that a lot of these services block the google voice VoIP numbers, so you can't even get away with that.
replies(3): >>45076156 #>>45076417 #>>45078908 #
2. jkestner ◴[30 Aug 25 17:01 UTC] No.45076156[source]▶
Imagine if they could block the banks of numbers that bad actors use.
replies(1): >>45076795 #
3. mjevans ◴[30 Aug 25 17:26 UTC] No.45076417[source]▶
Which is crazy, since that's the only service that even PARTLY filters some of the insane level of spam that gets sent to my unused prepaid number that everyone contacting is clearly an automated spambot.
4. jacquesm ◴[30 Aug 25 18:08 UTC] No.45076795[source]▶
This is one of the more annoying things I'm dealing with at the moment. Some bad actor (a Belgian company called Voxbone) that has thousands of numbers in NL keeps calling me with all kinds of obviously scammy proposals. They're abusive, rude and just won't get lost and they just keep switching to new numbers.
replies(2): >>45077187 #>>45077602 #
5. reaperducer ◴[30 Aug 25 19:10 UTC] No.45077187{3}[source]▶
This can't be happening.

There are easily hundreds of comments on HN from people in Europe who assure us all that this is solely an American problem, and that it never happens anywhere else.

replies(1): >>45083678 #
6. hyperman1 ◴[30 Aug 25 20:07 UTC] No.45077602{3}[source]▶
That's what it is? As a Belgian, I've got these calls for a few months now, from France or the Netherlands. Some robotic french female voice says something incomprehensible, then the call stops. Got about 8 of these in the last 2 months. I assumed this was mostly a US problem, but it appears over here now.
7. dlcarrier ◴[30 Aug 25 23:25 UTC] No.45078908[source]▶
That's what I do use, when a phone number is needed. The only placed that seemed to notice was OpenAI, but my GPU has 16 GB of RAM, so I run all my inferencing locally, using open models, which is a good idea anyway.

The bigger problem with Google Voice is that Google's email gateway for SMS is awful. It cuts off outgoing messages after two carriage returns, strips out single carriage returns, and won't send me group messages, instead sending me a link to the message, and even that only rarely, usually not even notifying me that I received a group message.

I've found a few alternatives, and I wouldn't mind paying a few dollars a month for one, but every one I've looked into requires I upload a copy of my photo ID, and I'm definately not going to do that.

replies(1): >>45084721 #
8. jacquesm ◴[31 Aug 25 15:00 UTC] No.45083678{4}[source]▶
Europe usually lags the USA on such subjects by about a decade.
9. backscratches ◴[31 Aug 25 16:56 UTC] No.45084721[source]▶
Jmp.chat is superb (time tested, open source, great support)... And cheogram (their mobile app) can be a UnifiedPush distributor!