The Secret Service said Tuesday it had seized hundreds of servers and 100,000 SIM cards it claimed were used to send anonymous threats to Trump officials.
The devices, which were found at a handful of sites in the New York tristate area, were also capable of massive surveillance operations or cyberattacks that could have shut down New York City’s cellular network.
The service began investigating the network, which was dismantled over the past three weeks, in the spring, after senior officials in President Donald Trump’s administration received anonymous, threatening phone calls, The Washington Post reported.
Officials briefed on the investigation declined to say which officials were threatened or how many, citing concerns about their privacy.
So far, no arrests have been announced in connection with the devices, which were configured to allow anonymous, encrypted communications between members of criminal enterprises.
Early analysis suggests they were used for communication between foreign governments—officials declined to say which ones—and “people known to federal law enforcement,” according to the service.
The devices were discovered in vacant apartments and other properties within 35 miles of this week’s U.N. General Assembly meeting in Manhattan, which is one of the Secret Service’s biggest protective events of the year.
The event, which draws more than 100 foreign leaders and their staffs, has been described as the “Super Bowl of spy games,” The New York Times reported.
So far, investigators have not linked the devices to any specific threats against the U.N.
But Matt McCool, special agent in charge of the service’s New York field office, said in a statement to the Post that the network’s timing, location and proximity to the U.N. could have impacted the meeting.
Experts told the Times that the equipment’s scale suggested the network could have been part of a nation’s surveillance operation. They said only a handful of countries—including Russia, China and Israel—could have pulled off the operation.
Investigators also discovered 80 grams of cocaine, illegal firearms, computers and phones at the sites where the devices were found.
The network was able to send 30 million anonymous text messages per minute, making it capable of large-scale denial-of-service attacks. DoS attacks overwhelm targets with fake communications traffic, potentially interfering with police and emergency workers’ ability to respond to a scene, officials said.
“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” Secret Service Director Sean Curran told the Post in a statement.
“The U.S. Secret Service’s protective mission is all about prevention, and this investigation makes it clear to potential bad actors that imminent threats to our protectees will be immediately investigated, tracked down and dismantled,” he added.
McCool said that while the devices no longer pose a threat to New York, investigators expect that further analysis of the SIM cards will reveal more Trump administration officials who have been targeted.
The investigation is being led by the Secret Service’s Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit, which Curran created shortly after taking over the service in January, together with the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and New York Police Department.
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