The US secret service found an illicit network of sophisticated equipment in New York City capable of shutting down the cellular network as foreign leaders prepared to gather nearby for the annual UN General Assembly.
Officials said the anonymous communications network, which included more than 100,000 Sim cards and 300 servers, could interfere with emergency response services and could be used to conduct encrypted communication.
One official said the network was capable of sending 30 million text messages a minute anonymously. The official said the agency had never before seen such an extensive operation.
There is no specific information that the network, now dismantled, posed a threat to the conference itself, Secret Service officials said. The agency leads the security for the UN meetings this week.
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The conference draws more than 100 foreign leaders and their staffs and has been described as the “Super Bowl of spy games”.
The scale of the equipment discovered suggests the network could be part of a nation’s surveillance operation, experts said.
Initial analysis of the data on some of the Sim cards has identified ties to at least one foreign nation, as well as links to known criminals including cartel members, Secret Service officials said.
One official said agents also found 80g of cocaine, illegal firearms, computers and mobile phones when they discovered the network.
“We will continue working toward identifying those responsible and their intent, including whether their plan was to disrupt the UN General Assembly and communications of government and emergency personnel during the official visit of world leaders in and around New York City,” Matt McCool, the top agent at the Secret Service’s New York field office, said.
Investigators found the Sim cards and servers in August at several locations within a 55km radius of the United Nations headquarters.
The discovery followed a months-long investigation into what the agency described as anonymous “telephonic threats” made to three high-level US government officials this spring – one official in the Secret Service and two who work at the White House, one official said.
The agency did not provide details about the threats made to the three officials, but Mr McCool described some as “fraudulent calls”.
“This network had the potential to disable cell phone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network,” Mr McCool said.
Investigators have been going through the data on Sim cards that were part of the network, including calls, texts and browser history.
Mr McCool said they expected to find that other senior government officials had also been targeted in the operation.
The agency shared crime scene photos of servers with antennas and Sim cards. In some cases, the servers holding the Sim cards were on floor-to-ceiling shelves.
Anthony J Ferrante, the global head of the cybersecurity practice at FTI, an international consulting firm, said the operation appeared to be sophisticated and costly.
“My instinct is this is espionage,” said Ferrante, who previously served in top cybersecurity positions at the White House and the FBI.
In addition to jamming the cellular network, he said, such a large amount of equipment near the UN could be used for eavesdropping.
James A Lewis, a cybersecurity researcher at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, said that only a handful of countries could pull off such an operation including Russia, China and Israel.
The New York Police Department, the Justice Department, Homeland Security Investigations and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are also investigating the discovery.
“This is an ongoing investigation, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe we won’t find more of these devices in other cities,” Mr McCool said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
