{"id":7182,"date":"2025-09-25T05:03:40","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T05:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/25\/us-disrupts-massive-cell-phone-array-in-new-york-html\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T05:03:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T05:03:40","slug":"us-disrupts-massive-cell-phone-array-in-new-york-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/25\/us-disrupts-massive-cell-phone-array-in-new-york-html\/","title":{"rendered":"US Disrupts Massive Cell Phone Array in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
US Disrupts Massive Cell Phone Array in New York<\/div>\n

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This is a weird story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The US Secret Service disrupted a network of telecommunications devices that could have shut down cellular systems as leaders gather for the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.<\/p>\n

The agency said on Tuesday that last month it found more than 300 SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards that could have been used for telecom attacks within the area encompassing parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis network had the power to disable cell phone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network in New York City,\u201d said special agent in charge Matt McCool.<\/p>\n

The devices were discovered within 35 miles (56km) of the UN, where leaders are meeting this week.<\/p>\n

McCool said the \u201cwell-organised and well-funded\u201d scheme involved \u201cnation-state threat actors and individuals that are known to federal law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unidentified nation-state actors were sending encrypted messages to organised crime groups, cartels and terrorist organisations, he added.<\/p>\n

The equipment was capable of texting the entire population of the US within 12 minutes, officials say. It could also have disabled mobile phone towers and launched distributed denial of service attacks that might have blocked emergency dispatch communications.<\/p>\n

The devices were seized from SIM farms at abandoned apartment buildings across more than five sites. Officials did not specify the locations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wait; seriously? \u201cSpecial agent in charge Matt McCool\u201d? If I wanted to pick a fake-sounding name, I couldn\u2019t do better than that.<\/p>\n

Wired<\/i> has some more<\/a> information and a lot more speculation:<\/p>\n

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The phenomenon of SIM farms, even at the scale found in this instance around New York, is far from new. Cybercriminals have long used the massive collections of centrally operated SIM cards for everything from spam to swatting to fake account creation and fraudulent engagement with social media or advertising campaigns.<\/p>\n

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SIM farms allow \u201cbulk messaging at a speed and volume that would be impossible for an individual user,\u201d one telecoms industry source, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the Secret Service\u2019s investigation, told WIRED. \u201cThe technology behind these farms makes them highly flexible\u2014SIMs can be rotated to bypass detection systems, traffic can be geographically masked, and accounts can be made to look like they\u2019re coming from genuine users.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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US Disrupts Massive Cell Phone Array in New York This is a weird story: The US Secret Service disrupted a network of telecommunications devices that could have shut down cellular systems as leaders gather for the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. The agency said on Tuesday that last month it found more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,95,267,171,1115,480,1],"tags":[87],"class_list":["post-7182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bruce-schneier","category-cell-phones","category-cyberattack","category-denial-of-service","category-infrastructure","category-telecom","category-uncategorized","tag-bruce-schneier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}