U.S. Secret Service disrupts telecom network that threatened NYC during U.N. General Assembly

The U.S. Secret Service disrupted a sprawling telecommunications network in the New York tri-state area that investigators said posed a serious potential disruption to New York’s telecom systems and a possible threat to the United Nations General Assembly meetings this week, according to CBS News.

In the largest seizure of its kind, the agency found active SIM farms at abandoned apartment buildings located at more than five sites, and recovered 300 SIM servers and over 100,000 SIM cards enabling encrypted, anonymous communication and capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute. Officials said the servers were so powerful they could have disabled cell phone towers and launched distributed denial of service attacks that could block emergency communications like EMS and police dispatch.

This network had the potential to disable cell phone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network in New York City, according to U.S. Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Matt McCool in a video released by the agency. An official briefed on the investigation told reporters that the network “could text message the entire country within 12 minutes,” later adding that “This was well organized and well funded.”