Originally published at: https://gizadeathstar.com/2025/10/the-secret-service-and-the-sims-raid/
This week has been one of those weeks where the choice of what to blog about has been so difficult, because there are so many important stories worthy of our signature “high octane speculation treatment.” Indeed, I am starting this week’s blogs by writing about a story that I fully intended to blog about within…
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… and that does not even include folks who do things like this for “fun” …
or groups like this …
L0pht Heavy Industries were a hacker group active between 1992 and 2000 and located in the Boston, Massachusetts area. The L0pht was one of the first viable hackerspaces in the US, and a pioneer of Responsible Disclosure. The group testified in front of Congress in 1998 on the topic of ‘Weak Computer Security in Government’.
… I think I first read about the folks that eventually became LOpht in The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll (1989).
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A video from 1990 about it…notice the PBS sponsors. 
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Also the main telco mobile/cell networks provide bespoke military transmission nodes and bands on mobile networks. They are extremely well encrypted but as is noted above could possibly be overwhelmed perhaps by denial of service attacks at nodes or NOCs.
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Oh the days when telephone lines were hard wired into a local building along with the batteries to operate them. An actual hard copy paper search warrant was required to tap a line that was proof as evidence in nefarious situations.
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In mobile/cell network operation, that is still required nominally, using LIP, the legal intercept protocol with a court warrant, at least in EU. But of course, that is for we plebs, the intelligence community in the EU and elsewhere still have their own routes in am sure.
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