Newsweek: The Secret Service said it dismantled a telecommunications network throughout the New York tristate area that was used to direct threats towards senior U.S. government officials and which posed an imminent threat to its ability to protect them.
All the devices were found within 35 miles of the United Nations General Assembly meeting of world leaders in New York City that kicked off on Monday, September 22. The Secret Service release said its early analysis shows communications between “nation-state threat actors” and individuals “known to federal law enforcement”.
It did not specify who the states or individuals involved are. No arrests have been made so far. Officials said they haven’t uncovered a direct plot to disrupt the U.N. General Assembly and note there are no known credible threats to New York City.
The 300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards had the potential to shut down New York City’s entire cellular network, among other telecoms attacks, such as crippling denial of services attacks, and it could enable encrypted communication between bad actors. The investigation is ongoing.
“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” said U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in a statement.
“The U.S. Secret Service’s protective mission is all about prevention, and this investigation makes it clear to potential bad actors that imminent threats to our protectees will be immediately investigated, tracked down and dismantled.”
Matt McCool, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s New York field office, said it “can’t be understated what this system is capable of doing.”
When agents entered the sites, they found rows of servers and shelves stacked with SIM cards.
More than 100,000 were already active, investigators said, but there were also large numbers waiting to be deployed, evidence that operators were preparing to double or even triple the network’s capacity, McCool said. He described it as a well-funded, highly organized enterprise, one that cost millions of dollars in hardware and SIM cards alone.
The operation had the capability of sending up to 30 million text messages a minute, McCool said.
