The U.S. Secret Service says it has taken down a network of electronic devices across the New York tristate area that posed an “imminent” risk to protective operations for senior U.S. officials. The discovery came during a protective-intelligence probe ahead of the United Nations General Assembly now underway in the city, the agency said.
Investigators found more than 300 co-located SIM servers and about 100,000 SIM cards at multiple sites. Beyond enabling anonymous telephonic threats, the hardware could be used to disable cell towers, launch denial-of-service attacks, and support encrypted communications for criminal groups or hostile actors, according to the agency. Early forensics indicate cellular traffic between nation-state actors and individuals already known to federal law enforcement.
“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” Secret Service Director Sean Curran said, adding that imminent threats to protectees will be “immediately investigated, tracked down and dismantled.”
The devices were concentrated within roughly 35 miles of UNGA venues, a proximity and timing that prompted a rapid disruption effort, the agency said. The Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit of the Secret Service is in charge of the investigation. This is a new unit that focuses on threats that are serious and likely to happen soon.
The Justice Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the NYPD, and other state and local partners helped out with technology.
The investigation is still going on, and the police are still looking at the confiscated equipment using forensic methods, the Secret Service said.
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