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- SIM box category: fraudsters will be denied access to purchase equipment for phone fraud
SIM box category: fraudsters will be denied access to purchase equipment for phone fraud
Attackers may be denied access to the purchase of SIM boxes— equipment for telephone calls. Internet resources offering such devices are planned to be blocked without a court decision. The authorities intend to introduce relevant amendments to the law "On Information" as part of a new package of anti-fraud measures. Sim boxes, devices containing multiple SIM cards, are used by criminals to call victims: if one card is blocked, calls come from others. Earlier, Izvestia revealed a network of Ukrainian companies that were creating turnkey infrastructure in Russia for telephone fraud and terrorist recruitment.
Which Internet resources do they want to block without trial
In Russia, it is planned to block out-of-court Internet pages with ads for the sale of subscriber terminals that have not passed the compliance confirmation procedure. This follows from the draft amendments to the law "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection", which the Ministry of Finance has sent for interdepartmental coordination. The document is part of a large-scale package of legislative measures to combat fraud.
The pages with advertisements for the sale of such equipment will be included in the unified register of resources with information, the distribution of which is prohibited in our country, along with pornographic materials, information about narcotic drugs, etc.
Currently, the third package of measures to combat cyberbullying is being coordinated with the relevant departments, the Ministry of Finance noted. It is premature to talk about specific details and the final version of the document, they said. It should be noted that all initiatives are being developed taking into account the balance of security and user rights — they are aimed at strengthening the protection of citizens from fraudsters in the Internet environment, the department added.
Izvestia sent a request to Roskomnadzor.
The subscriber terminals mentioned in the bill include so-called SIM boxes, devices used by fraudsters to make mass calls to potential victims, a source familiar with the work of several relevant departments told Izvestia.
A SIM box is a software and hardware complex that performs the functions of a gateway between the Internet (VoIP network) and a mobile communication network. It provides remote access to each installed SIM card, allowing you to remotely make phone calls and send text messages to an unlimited number of subscribers. Such complexes are capable of simultaneously accommodating dozens of SIM cards and modems with antennas, explained Leonid Konik, a partner at ComNews Research.
— Russian regulators and operators have almost completely taken control of fraudulent calls from abroad. But foreign scammers continue to call citizens from Russian mobile numbers, installing SIM cards with them in SIM boxes on the territory of our country," he said.
Such equipment has become the main tool for the entire money theft industry, said Igor Bederov, founder of the Internet Search company.
— The scale of illegal sales is huge. It is enough to open shadow forums or separate Telegram channels, where such devices are offered not as a means of fraud, but under the guise of legal equipment to "optimize calls" or "save on corporate communications," he told Izvestia.
According to the expert, an attacker located in another country launches a call via IP telephony. The call is sent to a SIM box in the Russian Federation, after which it is sent to the potential victim via a real SIM card of the local operator. At the same time, a regular Russian number is displayed on the phone screen, which lulls a person's vigilance.
The cost of a simple 32-channel SIM box on shadow sites ranges from 30,000 to 50,000 rubles, and multi-channel industrial devices can cost several hundred thousand rubles, Igor Bederov said. According to him, there are dozens of active storefronts in the Russian-speaking segment of Telegram alone, where hundreds of offers are posted monthly. There were cases when one seller sold more than 500 pieces of equipment per quarter.
Sim boxes have become one of the key elements of the infrastructure of mass fraudulent phone calls, agrees NTI wireless expert Oleg Yablokov. In his opinion, the operational blocking of ads will allow restricting access to non-certified equipment even before it is in the hands of intruders. Since the beginning of 2026 alone, law enforcement agencies have seized more than 500 SIM boxes and over 500,000 SIM cards used in fraudulent schemes. These data indicate that we are not talking about individual cases, but about the formed shadow infrastructure, the expert emphasized.
The problem of illegal use of telecom equipment remains relevant, according to MegaFon. The operator continuously identifies and blocks calls made from such devices, they said.
Will restrictions make life difficult for scammers
A Ukrainian trace can be traced in the supply of illegal SIM boxes for fraudulent call centers, an investigation conducted by Izvestia has shown. It turned out that the vast majority of such calls received by Russians are made using hardware and software created by the Ukrainian company Global Mind Associated and related companies in China, Hong Kong and Poland. Global Mind Associated and its partner GoAntiFraud are actively engaged in providing GoIP special programs to fraudsters in other regions of the world. In particular, individuals associated with GoAntiFraud train and recruit sim box administrators in Europe and Asia, as well as in the United States. The hottest destination is Africa, which is currently experiencing a real epidemic of phone fraud.
Yaroslav Shitsle, Head of the It&Ip Dispute Resolution department at Rustam Kurmaev & Partners, recalled that since September 1, 2025, the Criminal Code article "Illegal use of a subscriber terminal for traffic or a virtual telephone exchange" has been in force in the Russian Federation. The current regulations are primarily aimed at those who have already installed and launched such equipment. At the same time, the supply channel remained available on the open Internet, where SIM boxes were sold under the guise of ordinary network devices. The new amendments, according to the lawyer, are designed to eliminate this gap.
"The open retail showcase is going away, the entry threshold for the casual seller and the grassroots buyer is growing, the scheme is becoming more expensive and the replenishment rate of the device fleet is losing," he noted.
Blocking ads will increase the cost and complicate the purchase of equipment, as well as reduce the number of open distribution channels, Oleg Yablokov believes. In his opinion, it will not be possible to completely eliminate the market: some of the sales may move to closed chat rooms and foreign services. Therefore, restrictive measures should be combined with monitoring the use of SIM cards and identifying existing communication nodes, the expert added.
This is not about blocking the equipment itself, but about restricting access to advertising storefronts — channels for attracting customers and sales, Igor Bederov noted. According to him, if such platforms and one-day sites are promptly blocked out of court, the search for customers for sellers of this hardware will become dramatically more complicated. As a result, the economy of fraudulent business will become less attractive, and the entry threshold for new attackers will increase, the expert believes.
You can try to block websites with advertisements for the sale of SIM boxes, but it is more efficient to calculate working devices on communication networks, Leonid Konik believes. According to him, operators already have separate technologies for detecting such complexes.
In addition, less than a year ago, the Russian company Softtime received a patent for a complex for detecting such boxes in cellular networks. The solution is installed directly at the base stations, the expert noted. In his opinion, the use of such systems will be cheaper and more effective than the constant struggle with new sites that post information about the sale of such equipment.
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