(Reuters) – The U.S. Secret Service dismantled a network of sophisticated electronic devices in the New York area that had been used to threaten U.S. government officials, the agency said hours before President Donald Trump was due to address foreign leaders gathered at the U.N. General Assembly.
The devices were concentrated within 35 miles (56 km) of the global meeting of the 193-member assembly, the Secret Service said in a statement.
“Early analysis indicates cellular communications between nation-state threat actors and individuals that are known to federal law enforcement,” it said.
Authorities seized more than 300 SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites in an operation the agency said represented an imminent threat to its protective operations.
The devices were used to “conduct multiple telecommunications-related threats directed towards senior U.S. government officials,” the Secret Service said.
“This network had the potential to disable cell phone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network in New York City,” Matt McCool, special agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in New York, said in a video statement.
He said the devices no longer posed a threat to the area.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The devices discovered could be used to conduct a range of telecommunications attacks including disabling cell phone towers, enabling cybersecurity attacks and allowing encrypted communication between criminal groups and threat actors.
The tri-state area where the network was located includes New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.
McCool said the Secret Service began its investigation in the spring and worked with other federal and local agencies to track down the devices.
He said forensic analysts were examining the equivalent of 100,000 cell phones worth of data.
The Secret Service said it could not elaborate on who was behind the maneuvers, timed around the annual U.N. gathering.
