The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that last November, a company asked Telus to track down a scam text received by one of its customers. The Globe's Alexandra Posazki writes that Telus blocks hundreds of thousands of malicious text messages that attempt to traverse its network every day, but the telecom couldn't find any evidence of that particular message in its network logs, leading its techs to think it originated from an "SMS blaster" -- a powerful, portable cyberweapon that had never before been detected in Canada. Telus's work culminated in a months-long law-enforcement investigation. On Thursday, Toronto Police announced they had arrested three men and charged them with 44 offences, including fraud and mischief, in connection with a cybercrime probe dubbed Project Lighthouse. Authorities also seized several SMS blasters. The portable devices, which are small enough to hide in a backpack or the trunk of a car, are one of the hottest new gadgets in the arsenals of cybercriminals, and have been detected in other countries such as Britain and New Zealand. SMS blasters essentially function as rogue cell towers, prompting phones in their vicinity to connect to them instead of a wireless carrier's network.