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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 19 2019, @10:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the whose-line-is-it-anyways dept.

Submitted via IRC for soylent_fuschia

Two Charged Over Crypto Theft via SIM Swapping, Death Threats

Two men from Massachusetts were arrested and charged by the Boston U.S. District Court with stealing high-value social media accounts and hundreds of thousands worth of cryptocurrency from at least ten victims by using SIM swapping, death threats, and hacking.

Eric Meiggs and Declan Harrington, the two defendants, were charged with one count of conspiracy, eight counts of wire fraud, one count of computer fraud and abuse, and one count of aggravated identity theft in an 11-count indictment unsealed today.

A SIM swapping (aka SIM hijacking) attack is the process through which malicious actors take control of a target's mobile phone number without the victim's authorization.

This is done by convincing their target's' mobile phone service providers to reassign their phone number to an attacker-controlled SIM card either via social engineering or by bribing employees of the provider to do it.

These types of attacks allow crooks to take control of one's phone number, later to be used for bypassing SMS-based multi-factor authentication (MFA), for stealing credentials, and taking control of their targets' accounts for online services.

"Armed with your login credentials, the scammer could log in to your bank account and steal your money, or take over your email or social media accounts," the FTC says. "And they could change the passwords and lock you out of your accounts."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:04PM (#922327)

    2FA = two factor auth

    So, first factor is username + password

    Second is to send a generated key to using email, SMS or other.

    How is SMS not two factor?