Maureen Dowd is an Opinion columnist for The Times. She won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. She is the author, most recently, of “Notorious.” @MaureenDowd • Facebook
Fraidy-Cat at the Pentagon
". . .But I come not to bury the self-proclaimed “secretary of war,” rather to praise him.
He
is going to spur some superlative Pentagon coverage.
Because nothing
gets a bunch of reporters going like being forced out of the building
where they work and being told they aren’t allowed to do their jobs. . ."
HERE'S THE KICKER:
"Hegseth, immature and unconfident, cannot accept that a free press is integral to democracy. As Thomas Jefferson put it:
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government
without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not
hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Hopefully,
the defense secretary who will take over when Hegseth is undone by the
press for his ineptitude and un-American diktats will understand that.
European law enforcement in an operation code named 'SIMCARTEL' has
dismantled an illegal SIM-box service that enabled more than 3,200 fraud
cases and caused at least 4.5 million euros in losses.
The cybercriminal online services had about 1,200 SIM-box devices
with 40,000 SIM cards to provide phone numbers that were used in
telecommunication crimes ranging from phishing and investment fraud to
impersonation and extortion.
Europol dismantles SIM box operation renting numbers for cybercrime
In an announcement today, Europol says that the cybercrime service operated through two websites, gogetsms.com and apisim.com, which have been seized and now display a law enforcement banner.
Taking down the digital infrastructure was a collaborative effort between Europol and the Shadowserver Foundation.
The fraudulent SIM-box service offered phone numbers registered to
individuals in more than 80 countries, and rented them to customers that
needed to create and verify fake online accounts, allowing them to hide
their true identity and location.
“The criminal network and its infrastructure were technically highly
sophisticated and enabled perpetrators around the world to use this
SIM-box service to conduct a wide range of telecommunications-related
cybercrimes, as well as other crimes,” Europol says.
SIM box farm on the raided location Source: Europol
According to the European agency, the illegal service helped create
more than 49 million fraudulent online accounts. Authorities so far have
linked to some of them to 1,700 fraud cases in Austria and 1,500
Latvia.
Among the crimes facilitated by this service are fraud, extortion,
migrant smuggling, online marketplace scams, “daughter-son” money
transfer requests on WhatsApp, investment fraud through fake brokers,
fake shops and bank sites, and impersonation of police officers.
The financial damage caused by these activities is estimated to
approximately EUR 4.5 million ($5.3 million) in Austria and EUR 420,000
($490,000) in Latvia.
During the SIMCARTEL operation, which occurred on October 10, the
police arrested five Latvian nationals, and two other suspects, and
seized the following items in the raids:
1,200 SIM-box devices operating 40,000 SIM cards
Hundreds of thousands of SIM cards
Five servers and two websites
EUR 431,000 ($500,000) frozen in bank accounts and $333,000 in crypto accounts
4 luxury vehicles
The authorities have also published the video below from a search at one location in Latvia.
With the servers seized, a forensic analysis may help investigators identify customers of the illegal services.
MAUREEN DOWD 
