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Is there a less clickbait-y source? There's no tangible link to the United Nations described in the article; that seems to be a gratuitous flourish. > "several
by perihelions 1y ago
Is there a less clickbait-y source? There's no tangible link to the United Nations described in the article; that seems to be a gratuitous flourish.
> "several locations within a 35-mile radius of the United Nations headquarters"
That's the entirety of New York City!
edit to add: This very weird part was actually lifted from the USSS press release,
> "These devices were concentrated within 35 miles of the global meeting of the United Nations General Assembly now underway in New York City."
https://www.secretservice.gov/newsroom/releases/2025/09/us-secret-service-dismantles-imminent-telecommunications-threat-new-york https://www.secretservice.gov/newsroom/releases/2025/09/us-s... ("U.S. Secret Service dismantles imminent telecommunications threat in New York tristate area")
- tbrownaw 1y agoIt reminds me of those "how to promote yourself" things about say turning "did routine performance optimizations on the website" into "saved the company $ZZZ million" and such.
- wildzzz 1y agoThat quote comes directly from the Secret service press release lol
- kentm 1y agoNews organizations should not uncritically repeat press releases like these. It is an ethical failure to do so.
- lyu07282 1y ago[flagged]
- puttycat 1y agoWhat is nonsense about this story?
- agwa 1y agoA "35-mile radius of the United Nations headquarters" includes literally all of New York City and then some, making the supposed connection to the UN meeting extremely tenuous. This looks exactly like a "SIM farm" operation, which rents out access to real mobile numbers, usually for the purpose of spamming or fraud. Yet there's no mention of this possibility.
- lyu07282 1y agoThank you, exactly this^ There are stories of these SIM farms all the time, here is an example with very similar gear: https://www.vice.com/en/article/video-ukraine-busts-alleged-russian-bot-farm-using-thousands-of-sim-cards/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/video-ukraine-busts-alleged-... These stories are always sensationalized when their primary purpose by enlarge is probably just spam.
- thenthenthen 1y agoThe gear for those interested seems to be this: https://ejointech.shop/products/ejointech-4g-16-port-gsm-voip-gateway-256-sim-goip-gsm-gateway-sim-box-voice-sip-gateway https://ejointech.shop/products/ejointech-4g-16-port-gsm-voi...
- pyuser583 1y agoSorry to be nitpicky, but the US Secret Service really, really prefers the acronym "USSS" over "SS."
- jacquesm 1y ago[flagged]
- pyuser583 1y agoThey are, colloquially speaking, a "three letter agency." I think they should compromise with "USS".
- pavel_lishin 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- perihelions 1y ago(I've removed the distraction).
- emeril 1y ago[flagged]
- JdeBP 1y agoIt does seem like the sort of PR-rewrite for a press release that results in distances measured in football fields. Looking at a map, a 35 mile as-the-crow-flies (and as the cell network signal flies) radius of the U.N. Secretariat building almost gets one to Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey, in one direction and past Stamford, Connecticut, in another.
- AlanYx 1y agoIt's worth highlighting that that link suggests this may be linked to foreign states rather than just garden-variety organized crime ("...early analysis indicates cellular communications between nation-state threat actors...").
- agwa 1y agoThat probably just means that some foreign states were among the customers of these SIM farms.
- kylecazar 1y agoI read they were in Armonk, Greenwich, Jersey and Queens. A perimeter around Manhattan. The article: https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/23/us/swatting-investigation-server-network-discovered https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/23/us/swatting-investigation-ser...
- macNchz 1y agoArmonk and Greenwich don't really make sense if the idea was to create a perimeter around Manhattan.
- kylecazar 1y agoThe idea being there were caches to the West (Jersey), North (Armonk and Greenwich) and East (Queens). The article mentions a "circle around NYC's cellular network infrastructure".
- formerly_proven 1y ago"Concentrated within this 10000 km² area" sounds not nearly as impressive. Granted, "concentrated within 35 miles" sounds already rather dilute when talking about mobile phones.
- nathanielbennet 1y ago[dead]
- ghostpepper 1y agoNot a lot more detail but a better source in general https://therecord.media/secret-service-cellular-network-disruption https://therecord.media/secret-service-cellular-network-disr...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dang 1y agoWe've taken the UN out of the title now.