US Secret Service seizes New York City SIM farm near UN

The political protection agency of the United States, the Secret Service, said it has dismantled a network of electronic devices in multiple locations in New York, saying it was used to conduct telecommunications-related threats.

These were directed towards senior US government officials, the Secret Service said, "which represented an imminent threat to the agency's protective operations," it added.

Which officials were threatened was not revealed by the Secret Service, but the agency said early analysis indicates cellular communications between nation-state threat actors and individuals known to law enforcement.

The agency did not name which nation state is behind the threats.

Source: US Secret Service

Some 300 co-located subscriber identity module (SIM) servers were found, with 100,000 cards for these, across multiple sites, the agency said.

It added that the SIM boxes were concentrated within 56 kilometres of the global meeting at the United Nations General Assembly which is currently underway in New York City.

“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” Secret Service director Sean Curran said.

SIM boxes act as gateway devices to route voice calls and text messages via voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services, delivering the communications to mobile networks so that they appear to be local.

They are used by fraudsters for a range of abusive reasons, such as bypassing international calling rates, spamming, hiding caller IDs, and more.