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posted by martyb on Monday August 20 2018, @04:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the something-only-YOU-have-know-are dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

If hackers can convince your phone company to turn over your number to them, they can defeat two-factor authentication that relies on text messaging.

Crypto investor Michael Terpin filed a $224 million lawsuit against AT&T in California federal court Wednesday alleging that the phone company’s negligence let hackers steal nearly $24 million in cryptocurrency from him, Reuters reports. He’s also seeking punitive damages.

Terpin says hackers were twice able to convince AT&T to connect his phone number to a SIM card they controlled, routing his calls and messages to them and enabling them to defeat two-factor authentication protections on his accounts. In one case, he says hackers also took control of his Skype account and convinced one of this clients to send money to them rather than Terpin.

The second hack came even after AT&T agreed to put an additional passcode on his account, when a fraudster visited an AT&T store in Connecticut and managed to hijack Terpin’s account without providing the code or a “scannable ID” as AT&T requires, he says.

Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/90219499/att-gets-sued-over-two-factor-security-flaws-and-23m-cryptocurrency-theft


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