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The City of London Police (CLP) have revealed that Mohammed Faiyaz Iqbal (43) of Preston in Lancashire has been sentenced to more than 3 years and 8 months in prison for setting up a rogue cell phone tower, which was then used to bypass mobile network security protocols in order to send masses of fraudulent texts (aka – SMS Blaster).
For those who may be unfamiliar. SMS Blasters are essentially portable base stations (fake ones) that can be used to broadcast fraudulent text messages to nearby mobile phones by tricking them into connecting to it, rather than your legitimate mobile operator (this partly works by forcing connected mobiles to drop from secure 4G or 5G networks down to more vulnerable 2G signals).
The use of such an approach is effective because it bypasses all the usual security controls that real mobile operators use, which means that the SPAM or fraud texts never get blocked or marked as suspicious. On the flip side it does mean that the fraudster needs to be relatively close to their targets. Depending upon the location and setup, that could be anything from a few tens of metres and all the way up to around 1-2km.