Just as the United Nations was preparing to begin its annual general assembly, which will be headlined by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, the United States Secret Service discovered a "massive hidden telecom network" in New York, with startling implications.
According to reports, the now-dismantled system included over 300 servers and 100,000 fake SIM cards that could have been used to overwhelm the 911 network and disable large portions of the city's cell tower network.
The dismantled system consisted of over 300 SIM servers and more than 100,000 SIM cards spread within a 35-mile radius of the United Nations headquarters. Investigators say the network could have blacked out cellular service and flooded emergency response channels with spoofed traffic.
As of this writing, no broader plot has been connected to the system.
According to investigators, the network had the capacity to jam 911 calls, take down cell towers and cripple the city’s communication infrastructure at its most vulnerable moment.
While no direct plot has been linked to the U.N. event, officials warn the discovery points to a new kind of threat – one aimed at the invisible systems modern cities depend on.
Color me skeptical that this was just some random person's really weird hobby. The authorities may not be willing to share publicly who built this system and why, but I'd suspect they have at least some answers, even as the forensic analysis of the servers continues. I also suspect those answers lead to a specific country and not a person. The smart money is on China because the smart money is always on China.
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If that's the case, it would explain why the Trump administration is being so hush-hush about the origins of this system, given all the foreign policy implications.
It's worth thinking about the carnage that could be caused, and we need to consider whether Americans have become far too complacent when it comes to using modern technology. I grew up during the transition to cell phones, going from bag phones in cars to everyone playing "Snake" on their blue Nokias. I went from my parents having no way to track me when I went out to being able to track my own children within a few feet. The march of technological progress has its positives, but it also creates a reliance on systems that, if they went down, would cause absolute chaos.
Imagine if the UN building suffered a terrorist attack during the general assembly and every cell phone tower within a 35-mile radius went down. Yet, that's not even the most terrifying possibility. Imagine if an adversary like China was able to replicate that kind of attack on America's cell network across the entire country. It'd be complete pandemonium and the kind of thing that puts a society on the brink of collapse. Was this some kind of trial run to see what's possible?
Hopefully, we get some more information about what truly occurred here because there's clearly more to the story.
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