The U.S. Secret Service dismantled a network of electronic devices located throughout the New York tristate area that were used to conduct anonymous threats against senior U.S. government officials, the agency said in a Sept. 23 statement.
The devices—an assortment of more than 300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards spread across multiple sites—were discovered to be concentrated within 35 miles of the global meeting of the U.N. General Assembly currently underway in New York City.
World leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are expected to speak at the event.
The electronic devices presented an imminent threat to the Secret Service’s protective operations, and could have been used to conduct a wide range of telecommunications attacks, such as disabling cell phone towers, enabling denial-of-services attacks, and facilitating encrypted communication between potential threat actors, the agency said. “The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran said. “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.”
The investigation remains ongoing, with initial examination of these devices pointing to nation-state threat actors and individuals who are known to federal law enforcement.
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