More On the Comms Attack Plot in NYC

Another take on the big comms attack discovery in NYC, this from CBD via AOSHQ's cyber-queen.

 ...Over on the sidebar you'll find a link by CBD to an article about a planned attack against communications infrastructure in New York City, discovered and averted twelve days ago by the Secret Service.

They found 100,000 activated SIM cards and over 300 specialised (and, in the US, illegal) SIM servers set up to use them, in a handful of rented locations in the city, capable of sending out thirty million SMS messages per minute and overwhelming and crippling nearby cell towers.

The latest update us that the Secret Service has found another 200,000 SIM cards in another location nearby in New Jersey.

So the question is, who was behind this rather sophisticated plot, and what were they hoping to achieve? The Secret Service links it to China, which is probably true but only at the surface level.

Most likely this wasn't a nation-state planning a terror attack at all, but an organised crime ring using those hundreds of thousands of numbers to make scam calls. The hardware was probably smuggled from China, but not to declare war, just to make an illicit buck.

That's speculation, but what we know for sure - because it put the Secret Service on the track in the first place - is that this same network was used in swatting attacks against members of Congress in December of 2023....

CBD doesn't think it was the ChiComs.

But if that method and network was "swatting" Congress a couple of years ago,....

Hmmm.