SIM Farm in NYC Could Have Shut Down Cell Service, Officials Warn

The US Secret Service discovered a large SIM farm operation located near New York City, raising concerns about potential future threats.

The officials disclosed on Tuesday that they located more than 100,000 SIM cards linked to about 300 servers spread across 35 miles from Manhattan, as first reported by WIRED. These criminal devices , often called SIM servers or SIM boxes, allow for massive spam text and call operations.

The Secret Service said the farm came to its attention after it was linked to “swatting” attacks against members of Congress in December 2023.

“Given the number of SIM cards all under the control of a single operation, it could have ‘disabled cell phone towers and essentially shut down the cell phone network in New York City,’” Matt McCool, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s New York field office, told WIRED..

Another law enforcement source said: “This network could be used to overwhelm cell towers… to give you an idea of capacity for disruption, this network could be used to send approximately 30 million text messages per minute, meaning it could anonymously text the entire United States in around 12 minutes,” as reported by WIRED.

The Secret Service confirmed the SIM farm had been used by organized crime and nation-state actors. The investigators took possession of the equipment but no one has been arrested, as reported by WIRED.

Experts believe the primary purpose was fraud. “The disruption of cell services is possible, flooding the network to the degree that it couldn’t take any more traffic,” said Ben Coon of Unit 221b, as reported by WIRED. “My gut is telling me there was some type of fraud involved here,” Coon added.

While SIM farms are not new, the scale of this operation and its proximity to critical US infrastructure have amplified concerns about their potential for disruption.