New York (AP) – Nearly 150 world leaders prepare to descend in Manhattan UN General Assembly, The US Secret Service was quietly dismantling huge hidden communications networks throughout the New York area. Systems investigators say it crippled cell towers, clogged 911 calls and immersed the disruptive network at the moment the city was most vulnerable.
A cache consisting of over 300 SIM servers packed with over 100,000 SIM cards and clustered within 35 miles of the United Nations, is one of the most drastic communication threats revealed in the US soil. Investigators warn that the system may have blocked mobile phone services in cities that rely on daily life as well as emergency response and counter-terrorism.
When foreign leaders choked up Manhattan, where midtown hotels and cars, authorities say the takedowns highlight a new frontier of risk: a plot aimed at the invisible infrastructure that continues to connect modern cities.
A broader investigation led to this discovery
The network was revealed as part of a broader Secret Service investigation into telecommunications threats targeting senior government officials, investigators said. A server spread across multiple sites acts like a mock mobile phone bank, capable of generating large calls and text, overwhelms local networks and masks encrypted communication criminals.
Matt McCool, a special agent responsible for Secret Service’s New York Field office, said: “It can beat the phone so people can no longer communicate, right?… You can’t text messages, you can’t use your phone. And if you tie it up with other events associated with UNGA, you will use your imagination there and it can be devastating to the city.”
Authorities said they had not revealed any direct conspiracy to disrupt the UN General Assembly, and that there is no known credible threat to New York City.
Although forensic analysis is still in its early stages, agents believe that perpetrators in a particular country used the system to send encrypted messages to organized crime groups, cartels and terrorist organizations. Authorities have not made any details about the particular government or criminal groups linked to the network at this time.
“We need to do forensic medicine with 100,000 mobile phones, basically every phone, every text message, communication related. We need to see where these numbers are,” McCool said, noting that the process takes time.
Extensive and expensive operations
When the agent entered the site, he found a row of servers and shelves loaded with SIM cards. Investigators said over 100,000 people were already active, but many were waiting for deployment, with evidence that operators were preparing to double or triple the network’s capacity, McCool said. He described it as a highly organized company funded and costing millions of dollars on hardware and SIM cards alone.
The operation had the ability to send up to 30 million text messages per minute, McCool said.
“The US Secret Service’s protection mission is about prevention, and the investigation reveals to potentially bad actors that any imminent threat to parents will be quickly investigated, tracked and dismantled,” agency director Sean Curran said in a statement.
Authorities also warned of the havoc that if the network was left intact, it could have been caused by the network. McCool compared the potential impact with cellular blackouts following the September 11 attack and the Boston Marathon bombing when the network collapsed under tension. In this case, he said, the attacker could have forced such a shutdown at the time they chose.
“Are there any other people?” McCool said, “It would be unwise to think that there are no other networks built in other cities in the United States.”
