The phone-disrupting scheme was one of the most sweeping communications threats ever uncovered on U.S. soil.
NEW YORK — As roughly 150 world leaders geared up to arrive in Manhattan for the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. Secret Service was quietly deactivating an extensive covert telecom network spread across the New York area. Investigators claim this system had the potential to cripple cell towers, disrupt 911 calls, and create network chaos precisely when the city was at its most vulnerable.
The setup, comprising over 300 SIM servers with more than 100,000 SIM cards within a 35-mile radius of the United Nations, marks one of the most substantial communications threats discovered on U.S. soil. Investigators caution that the system could have disrupted cellular service in a city that depends on it not only for daily operations but also for emergency services and counterterrorism.
While foreign leaders occupied midtown hotels and motorcades congested Manhattan, officials suggest the takedown underscores a new realm of risk: threats aimed at the invisible infrastructure that keeps a modern city connected.
A broader investigation led to this discovery
This network was discovered during an extensive Secret Service investigation into telecommunications threats directed at senior government officials, investigators reveal. Spread over various locations, the servers acted like banks of mock cellphones, capable of generating mass calls and texts, overwhelming local networks, and concealing encrypted communications for criminals, officials stated.
“The capabilities of this system cannot be overstated,” said Matt McCool, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s New York field office. “It can disable cell towers, which means communication would halt, right? … You can’t text, you can’t use your phone. And if paired with some other event related to UNGA, you know, use your imagination there, it could be catastrophic to the city.”
Officials noted they hadn’t found a direct plan to disrupt the U.N. General Assembly and stated that there are no known credible threats to New York City.
Forensic analysis is still in its early stages, but agents believe nation-state actors — perpetrators from particular countries — used the system to send encrypted messages to organized crime groups, cartels and terrorist organizations, McCool said. Authorities have not disclosed details on the specific government or criminal groups tied to the network at this point.
“We need to do forensics on 100,000 cell phones, essentially all the phone calls, all the text messages, anything to do with communications, see where those numbers end up,” McCool said, noting that the process will take time.
An extensive, expensive operation
When agents entered the sites, they found rows of servers and shelves stacked with SIM cards. More than 100,000 were already active, investigators said, but there were also large numbers waiting to be deployed, evidence that operators were preparing to double or even triple the network’s capacity, McCool said. He described it as a well-funded, highly organized enterprise, one that cost millions of dollars in hardware and SIM cards alone.
The operation had the capability of sending up to 30 million text messages a minute, McCool 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 agency’s director, Sean Curran, said in a statement.
Officials also warned of the havoc the network could have caused if left intact. McCool compared the potential impact to the cellular blackouts that followed the Sept. 11 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombing, when networks collapsed under strain. In this case, he said, attackers would have been able to force that kind of shutdown at a time of their choosing.
“Could there be others?” said McCool “It’d be unwise to think that there’s not other networks out there being made in other cities in the United States.”
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