Could a rayhunter device be used to collect data for statistical analysis using the 'Marlin' tool?

[WilliamWintSBU]

Hello smart people,

Some website called "Straight Arrow News" recently broke a story about a possible IMSI catcher being used during a protest at an ICE facility near Portland, OR. It was detected by monitoring the rate of IMSI requests in the area using an SDR, building on work by researchers at the University of Florida and ETH Zurich. The ratio of IMSI requests compared to other requests spiked several times during the protest, which is baseline data suggests is unusual.

Instagram story my friend sent me
Link to full article
Link to research paper about this 'Marlin' tool

To summarize, the researchers collected baseline data about the number of IMSI requests and the ratio of IMSI requests to other requests under normal conditions. They compared this baseline level to a simulated IMSI catcher and an IMSI catcher that they found in the wild. I personally haven't been thinking about this problem for very long, but this seems like an elegant solution to the heuristic problem.

My questions

• Could such a heuristic (ratio of IMSI requests to other requests) be incorporated into the rayhunter software?
• Could a rayhunter device be used to collect lots of data about lots of requests coming from many cell towers for later processing using this existing software tool?
• If neither of these things is possible, does a HackRF have enough juice (baseband BW, etc.) to replicate this study?

I'm sure that someone has though of this already, but I want to start a discussion about this. I also want to know whether this is something I can do in my hometown, once my hotspot arrives in the mail. A wide band SDR with lots of IF bandwidth would be a fun tool to play with, but I don't think I can get my activist friends to make the investment.