The U.S. Secret Service today announced that it recently disrupted a hidden telecom network in the New York Tri-State Area that had the potential to wreak havoc on New York’s telecom systems and posed a threat to United Nations General Assembly meetings this week.
As about 150 world leaders were preparing to arrive in Manhattan for the assembly, in the background the Secret Service was taking down a system that investigators have said could have crippled cell towers, made 911 calls impossible and, in general, caused chaos in the city not unlike something from a Hollywood movie.
Authorities discovered the equipment just 35 miles from the U.N. headquarters. Alongside it, investigators seized 80 grams of cocaine, illegal firearms, as well as multiple computers and phones.
The probe was spearheaded by the Secret Service’s newly created “Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit,” established under Director Sean Curran and working in coordination with Homeland Security Investigations.
The network, which was reportedly discovered in August, included more than 300 SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites. According to the New York Times, it had the potential to send 30 million anonymous text messages per minute, an operation an official said was bigger than anything seen before.
It’s not known if the U.N. meetings were the focus. Investigators said multiple U.S. officials had already received telephonic threats, including some protected by the Secret Service, which was the reason the investigation was initiated. It’s expected that more officials were targeted, which will become clearer as the investigation continues.
“We will continue working toward identifying those responsible and their intent, including whether their plan was to disrupt the U.N. General Assembly and communications of government and emergency personnel during the official visit of world leaders in and around New York City,” Matt McCool of the Secret Service’s New York field office said in a video statement.
So far the investigators, by looking at the data on some of the SIM cards, can say at least one foreign nation was involved and that the operation was “well-funded.” It seems criminals already known to U.S. law enforcement could have been in on the scheme, as well as someone or some people known to be part of cartels. Though the country hasn’t been named, a cybersecurity researcher told The Times that only a few nations were capable of such a feat, including China, Russia and Israel.
“This is an open and active investigation, and we have no arrests to announce today,” McCool added. “The Secret Service will continue to run down all leads until we fully understand the intent of the operation and identify those responsible.”
Photo: Secret Service
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