NEW: Secret Service Foils Plot to Cripple NYC's Telecom Network -- By China?

And just in time, as it turns out. The UN General Assembly will meet today and through this week, with Donald Trump scheduled to speak this morning. The alleged plot targeted the backbone of the telecommunications systems on which the Secret Service and law enforcement rely. In an extraordinary announcement made about an hour ago, the Secret Service revealed the existence of an extensive network of malicious devices, which have been dismantled.

So who's responsible? A source told ABC News that China is high up on the list of suspects:

Secret Service agents believe they have cracked a plot that could have crippled the telecommunications network -- and law enforcement functions -- in the nation's largest city as more than 150 world leaders descend this week on New York, officials said on Tuesday.

"The potential for disruption to our country's telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated," Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in a statement.

Agents were first tipped off last spring, and officials believe the plot is connected to the Chinese government, according to one law enforcement source briefed on the probe.

CBS News has more details on the scope and breadth of the network, which aimed at taking down the cellular-network backbone:

In the largest seizure of its kind, the U.S. Secret Service announced Tuesday that the agency found active SIM farms at abandoned apartment buildings located at more than five sites. In total, law enforcement discovered 300 SIM servers – over 100,000 SIM cards – enabling encrypted, anonymous communication and capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute. Officials say the servers were so powerful they could have disabled cell phone towers and launched distributed denial of services attacks with the ability to block emergency communications like EMS and police dispatch. ... 

An official briefed on the investigation told reporters that this week, the sophisticated network "could text message the entire country within 12 minutes," later adding, "This was well organized and well funded."

Telephonic threats to multiple senior U.S. officials this past spring – including multiple people protected by the Secret Service – first triggered the investigation, but officials say the network was seized within the last three weeks.

This definitely sounds dangerous, but also curious. First off, are the telephonic threats related to the network they discovered? If so, then whoever ran this operation is an idiot. The covert uses of this network far exceed whatever value the threats may have provided, even as a test of Secret Service capabilities. Why draw attention to the operation? It seems more likely that the threats were unrelated and forced investigators to start scrutinizing network anomalies a lot more closely, then discovered this operation as a result. But who knows?

Next question: What was the real purpose of this network? Sure, it could have crashed the backbone and wreaked terrible havoc on NYC during the UN meetings. But was that the intent? That kind of network sounds more like a massive intel-gathering operation, with robust capabilities of infiltrating electronic devices for anyone traveling in the region. The UN General Assembly meetings would provide all sorts of high-value targets for such an operation. The DDOS capabilities could have been a feature for a separate operation, but it seems like a lot of work and money for a dumb hacker attack that the city and the US government could have worked around, with no small effort, of course. 

And of course, the main question is who was behind it. It had to be an entity with plenty of cash and resources, along with hostile intent regardless of the purpose of the network. Given the technical aspects of this, there are only a few potential suspects: Iran, Russia, or China -- or a combination thereof. If it does turn out to be China, that will certainly complicate trade talks with Trump. Stay tuned -- and don't respond to unknown text messages. 

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.

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