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Serious telecommunications threat exposed by Secret Service ahead of UN General Assembly meeting
The United States Secret Service dismantled a serious telecommunications “threat” near the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
The plot, if successful, could have taken down phone lines in New York City, where the event is being held.
The devices were located within 35 miles of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly, but there was no sign that the meeting itself would have been targeted.
“While forensic examination of these devices is ongoing, early analysis indicates cellular communications between nation-state threat actors and individuals that are known to federal law enforcement,” the Secret Service said.
Matt McCool, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s New York field office, said in a video released Tuesday that the plan could have had extremely serious implications.
“This network had the potential to disable cellphone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network in New York City,” he said.
The Secret Service said it found 300 SIM servers, along with 100,000 SIM cards at multiple locations. McCool said that investigation began in the spring, and the recovered devices no longer pose a threat to the New York tristate area.”
More work is now underway to see if there are similar threats and more details about who was behind the network.
Fox News’ CB Cotton and Greg Norman contributed to this report.