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‘SIM Farms’ Are a Spam Plague. A Giant One in New York Threatened US Infrastructure, Feds Say
The agency says it found a network of some 300 servers and 100,000 SIM cards—enough to knock out cell service in the NYC area. Experts say it mirrors facilities typically used for cybercrime.
The recent discovery of a sprawling SIM farm operation in the New York City area has revealed how these facilities, typically used by cybercriminals to flood phones with spam calls and texts, have grown large enough that the US government is warning it could have been used not just for crime, but large-scale disruption of critical infrastructure. In this case, according to a CNN report on the Secret Service’s investigation, the agency got onto the trail of the New York area SIM farm after it was used in a pair of swatting incidents around Christmas Day in 2023 that targeted Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and US senator Rick Scott. SIM farms allow “bulk messaging at a speed and volume that would be impossible for an individual user,” one telecoms industry source, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the Secret Service’s investigation, told WIRED.
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