Coffee Break // Cyber News 000

As I sip my espresso this morning (ok, fine—slurp.) my eyeballs roam over a secret service press release that a family member passed along.

Given my interest in electronic and wireless security, I’m eager to learn more.

The press release details how bad actors (criminal and foreign actors) in the NY Tri-state area had constructed a network of 300 SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites in a 35 mile radius.

Special Agent in Charge Matt McMcool lays out the severity of this threat in his coverage on the Secret Services YouTube channel. This network had the capacity to take down cell phone towers and conduct major DoS attacks. Given the proximity of the network to UN General Assembly and it’s capacity to seriously disrupt the telecommunications infrastructure, one can understand why the Secret Service acted to take it down.

For me, stories like this highlight the reality of cyberwarfare in our IT infrastructure. At all times, our adversaries are scoping out both governmental (UN, US Gov, etc) and civilian systems to exploit.

So much of our daily lives are linked inextricably to the continuous operation of telecommunications networks.

Consider the impact of CrowdStrike going down from a bad update in July of last year, or the Russian virus NotPetya wiping out hundreds of millions of dollars of business by catching shipping giant Maersk in the crossfire of their cyberwar with Ukraine. How many 1s and 0s stand between you and your grocery store shutting down, and your gas stations running out?

I’ll try and follow this story a bit, and update it and others as time goes on.

Who do you think is behind this network that they’ve taken down?