All articles tagged with #sim swap
A cybersecurity researcher discovered and demonstrated a vulnerability that allowed them to reveal any phone number linked to a Google account through brute force methods, posing significant privacy and security risks, especially for SIM swap attacks. Google has since fixed the issue and awarded the researcher $5,000 for their findings.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that a SIM swap attack was responsible for the recent breach of its official account on X (formerly Twitter), leading to a fake post about bitcoin ETF approval. The unauthorized party gained control of the SEC's cell phone number and reset the account password, as two-factor authentication had been disabled. The agency is working with law enforcement and federal oversight entities to investigate the incident, while X (formerly Twitter) and its cooperation with investigators are under scrutiny.
British hacker Joseph O'Connor, also known as PlugwalkJoe, has been sentenced to five years in a US prison for stealing $794,000 worth of cryptocurrency via a SIM swap attack on a crypto exchange executive in 2019. O'Connor also played a role in the major Twitter hack of July 2020, which fetched him and his crew around $120,000 worth of ill-gotten crypto gains. SIM swap attacks continue to be a significant issue in the crypto sector.