SIM city: Feds say 100,000-card farms could have killed cell towers in NYC

The US Secret Service has dismantled a network of SIM farms in and around New York City it claims was behind multiple incidents targeting senior government officials and had enough power to disrupt entire cellular networks.

The network – or at least the parts the Secret Service has discovered – was massive, consisting of more than 300 colocated SIM servers, controlling more than 100,000 SIM cards, set up at multiple locations. All of the facilities the Secret Service discovered were located throughout the New York Tri-state area (NY, New Jersey, and Connecticut) but all within 35 miles of the UN headquarters building in NYC.

While the Secret Service wouldn’t go into detail citing the active nature of the investigation, it did say that the SIM farms “were used to conduct multiple telecommunications-related threats directed towards senior US government officials” in recent months.

“The investigation led us to the New York Tri-state area where investigators discovered tens of thousands of colocated and networked cellular devices capable of carrying out nefarious telecommunications attacks,” Secret Service Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office Matt McCool said in a video accompanying the press release. “This network had the potential to disable cell phone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network in New York City.”

The investigation is ongoing and seized hardware is still being forensically examined, but the Secret Service said its early analysis suggests the US operators of the SIM farms were at least coordinating with nation-state threat actors to carry out their attacks.

The Secret Service declined to get specific about the attacks targeting US officials or the nation-states involved, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation, but it’s not hard to make some guesses as to what “telecommunications-related threats” may involve.

Elected officials like Congresswoman and Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Senator Rick Scott have been targeted by “swatting” calls, which involve calling in fake threats that require a SWAT team-level response as a way to harass and possibly harm targets. At least one person has been killed as a result of swatting. Biden-era CISA boss Jen Easterly has been swatted as well.

Last year, the US charged a pair of European youths with making nearly 120 swatting calls between 2020 and 2024 that targeted officials. One of the suspects has since pleaded guilty.

There was no suggestion of a link between those prior incidents and the disrupted SIM farms, though the Secret Service did say that “individuals that are known to federal law enforcement” were involved in some of the communications between US-based operators of the SIM farms and nation-state threat actors.

No arrests have yet been made in connection with the investigation, a spokesperson told us. ®

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