As world leaders gathered for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York City this September, the United States Secret Service dismantled a telecommunications threat that authorities report could have caused widespread disruption in the city. CBS News New York reported the story, featuring commentary from Steve Cobb, SecurityScorecard’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).

“This was a massive plot to disrupt New York City’s cell network as world leaders gathered at the United Nations headquarters. Cybersecurity experts say if the telecom threat wasn’t stopped, it would’ve had major consequences in our area,” CBS News New York Reporter Jennifer Bisra said.

As Cobb explained in the segment, “with world leaders all in one place, if some type of attack was triggered, this could have severely hindered the recovery and rescue operations after such an attack.”

Watch the full CBS News New York segment below.

How The Secret Service Found the SIM Farm

The Secret Service launched their investigation earlier this year after uncovering several telecommunications-linked threats targeting government officials. Their probe led to the operation across the New York Tri-State area, where agents uncovered the large SIM farm spread across five abandoned apartments.

Investigators seized:

• 300 SIM servers
• Over 100,000 active SIM cards
• Infrastructure capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute

As Cobb noted, “It’s like 100,000 cell phones sitting there with somebody else controlling it from a remote location. This looks very organized.”

Federal officials noted that if the threat actors had used the infrastructure during UNGA, it could have disrupted cell service for first responders during a potential attack.

With this scale of infrastructure, attackers could have disabled cell towers or flooded networks to jam emergency communications.

“With world leaders all in one place, if some type of attack was triggered, this could severely hinder the recovery and rescue operations after such an attack,” Cobb said.

One scenario, Cobb noted, is “they start so many texts or phone calls that the cell tower’s flooded, and now an emergency 9-1-1 call can’t go out. Ambulances couldn’t get to that area.”

In addition to the SIM farm, agents recovered illegal firearms, drugs, computers, and phones..

This case illustrates how telecommunications infrastructure remains a target for threat actors. As Cobb’s on-air analysis highlights, threats like this demonstrate that security leaders must now monitor for threats beyond their corporate perimeters.

SecurityScorecard introduced the first Security Ratings specific to the telecommunications sector in partnership with industry leaders to account for the complexity of the telco digital ecosystem. We work to provide a comprehensive assessment of Telecommunications’, Internet Service Providers’, and Cloud Providers’ digital risk.

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