Depends what you mean by “faking”. You can fake Ukrainian IP by using some VPN service, but then you’re using VPN IP which is quite obvious. If you want many genuinely residential IPs, you could use some botnet and infected computers in Ukraine. This is more authentic and harder to filter out. But some services actually require phone number and at least capability to receive texts to verify the number, some use the number as user account. (Telegram and such) Then you need actual SIM cards (not to be confused with Sims 3, the game 😉) and you need to connect to local cell tower. (perhaps you could do roaming, but that would be quite obvious long term) Now to fake all that, you’d need at least some devices operated in Ukraine and at that stage it’s probably easier to find some people willing to do this locally for money or because they are high on russian propaganda themselves.
Do you need to connect to actual celltowers tho? I know legit SIMs are a kind of a barrier, but then…
Using a portal through KZ to an UA endpoint via VPN\proxy, faking geoloc and other identifying stuff on your device.
For me, it sounds like enough, and a collaborant is only holding an exit node that is easier to defend in court than having all infrastructure at their place.
Well you do if you want to receive the confirmation text. And while you’re at it, you might as well use the same cell tower for data so that you get “residential” IP.
You can definitely fake geolocation and perhaps you could fake IP through some proxy, but you can’t use commercial VPN services as their IPs are well known VPN IP ranges at this stage. (these SIMs might have been used as such proxies for some spamming besides being used for this specific botnet) Effectively the more you want to blend in with the actual Ukrainian end user traffic, the more you need to be present in the country and the more complicated it is to fake it otherwise. Especially if you’re trying to hide from state level investigation, that has access to triangulation from cell towers, providers logs, etc…
It’s just I see one collab having a gateway on their PC for russian-based labs to operare rather than the whole scheme based oin Ukraine.
Cell-tower data would be hepfull to locate the guy, but do web\apps collect it?
