Secret Service Thwarts Plot to Take Out Cell Service Near UN

Myles Miller, Bloomberg News Senior Reporter, discusses New York City's traffic situation as the United Nations General Assembly convenes this week. He also breaks down news of a threat to take out cell service during the UN meeting in the New York area.

Federal agents dismantled a network of devices in the New York area that was used to threaten senior US government officials and bore signs of foreign involvement, according to the US Secret Service.

Agents discovered more than 300 SIM card servers and 100,000 SIM cards at several locations within a 35-mile radius of New York City, according to a statement on Tuesday. The Secret Service moved quickly given that any attack could have severely disrupted New York at a time when world leaders are gathering in the city for a meeting of the UN General Assembly.

The Secret Service didn’t identify the officials who were threatened, the nature of the threat or the nations that may have been involved.

They said the Secret Service hasn’t publicly called out any nation in part because of sensitivities around this week’s UN General Assembly meeting.

“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in the statement. He said the investigation “makes it clear to potential bad actors that imminent threats to our protectees will be immediately investigated, tracked down and dismantled.”

Bad actors using SIM card servers and thousands of cards can send anonymous threats and conduct attacks such as disabling cell towers and overwhelming communications networks.

Matt McCool, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s New York field office, said the seizure was the largest operation of its kind the agency had undertaken. Agents were still conducting forensic analysis on more than 100,000 SIM cards, he said. “The timing, the location, the proximity of this network had the potential to impact the UN, and that was clear and something that we had to consider,” McCool said.

Initial analysis of the seized data has identified ties to at least one foreign nation, as well as links to criminals already known to US law enforcement, including cartel members, according to people familiar with the investigation. It wasn’t clear what connection the foreign nation and the criminals had to each other, if any, or what their links were to the devices.

It was also unclear if the network was linked to a spate of incidents earlier this year that saw unknown actors impersonate White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Over the summer, a State Department cable said an unknown person left voice and text messages for at least five people, including “three foreign ministers, a US governor and a US member of Congress” after creating a Signal account that pretended to be Rubio’s in mid-June.

Britain has already taken steps to restrict SIM farms. In April, the Home Office announced a ban on the possession or supply of SIM farms without a legitimate reason, citing their role in “smishing” campaigns that impersonated delivery services or banks.

--------

Watch Bloomberg Radio LIVE on YouTube

Weekdays 7am-6pm ET

Follow us on X

Subscribe to our Podcasts:

Bloomberg Daybreak

Bloomberg Surveillance

Bloomberg Intelligence

Balance of Power

Bloomberg Businessweek

Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app:

Apple CarPlay

Android Auto

Visit our YouTube channels:

Bloomberg Podcasts

Bloomberg Television

Bloomberg Originals