The US Secret Service has uncovered and neutralized a network of devices capable of shutting down New York City’s entire cellular network, the agency said Tuesday. The network, the agency said, was behind a wave of swatting calls that targeted government officials earlier this year.
The scale of the scheme sounds staggering. The Secret Service said that its agents seized more than 100,000 SIM cards and 300 SIM servers, spread across five different safe houses in or around the city. All were unoccupied, though authorities also seized 80 grams of cocaine, illegal firearms, as well as computers and cell phones.
One official who chose to remain anonymous told the New York Times that the network could send 30 million text messages per minute. The criminal operation was so extensive, the unnamed official said, that it was unlike anything the agency had ever seen before.
“These devices allowed anonymous, encrypted communications between potential threat actors and criminal enterprises, enabling criminal organizations to operate undetected,” Matt McCool, the head of the Secret Service New York Field Office, said in a video statement, as quoted by NBC News. “This network had the potential to disable cell phone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network in New York City.”
In a dramatic illustration of the network’s potential, McCool said that the network could have sent an encrypted and anonymous text to every human being in the US within 12 minutes, per CNN’s coverage. It could’ve blotted out access to the city’s cell towers and stopped everyone in Manhattan from accessing Google Maps.
If the network was intended to conduct such an all-out, large-scale attack, what this attack would’ve intended to accomplish is unclear. But one official said the operation was capable of interfering with emergency responder and police communications, while also being able to facilitate its own encrypted communications.
So far, the threats that officials have traced back to the network have been smaller-scaled. It appears that the network was behind a series of swatting calls, a dangerous form of harassment in which an anonymous individual tricks law enforcement into sending armed tactical units to a victim’s location by calling in a fake threat. The swatting calls targeted government officials, including some from the Secret Service.
Among the locations where the network safe houses were found included Queens, New York; Armonk, New York; Greenwich, Connecticut; and New Jersey. They formed a circle around the New York City’s cellular infrastructure, according to officials briefed on the situation, per CNN.
Right now, officials are determining if the operation could’ve targeted the annual United Nations General Assembly. No specific evidence has been found pointing to a UN attack, but the possibility hasn’t been ruled out.
“My instinct is this is espionage,” Anthony Ferrante, global head of the cybersecurity firm FTI, told the NYT, suggesting that the such a large amount of equipment near UN headquarters could’ve been used for eavesdropping.
As it stands, no arrests have been announced. McCool speculated that a foreign government could’ve been behind the operation — but he also floated the possibility of cartels, human traffickers, or terrorists (the distinctions between which have become increasingly blurred under the Trump administration, it’s worth noting.)
“This is an ongoing investigation, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe we won’t find more of these devices in other cities,” McCool said.
More on cybersecurity: Scammers Are Now Driving Around With Fake Cell Towers That Blast 100,000 Texts Per Hour