Quote from: Elmer1 on August 01, 2018, 01:12:57 PM

Forget cryptojacking, SIM hijacking now seems set to become even more lucrative for criminals looking to cash in with bitcoin from the burgeoning space.

]A 20-year old college student from BostonMassachusetts was arrested in California earlier this month on charges of being part of a gang that hacked cellphone numbers before stealing over US$5 million in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

According to Motherboard, the number of cell phone numbers that the Bostonian named Joel Ortiz and his accomplices hacked using a technique referred to as SIM swapping or hijacking was about 40. With SIM hijacking, mobile operators are tricked into transferring the phone number of a target to a SIM card thats under the control of the criminal. Upon obtaining the number the criminals can then reset passwords before accessing online accounts of their victim.

Read more about this news https://www.ccn.com/sim-hijackers-steal-over-5-million-in-bitcoin-in-first-reported-crime-of-its-kind/

This is purely not the fault of the phone holder because there is no way to control what someone who steal your phone can do with it. The fault is actually from the service provider with how much they pride themselves as using state of the art facilities, they could be tricked into giving personal information in such a cheap way and not asking for more information to clarify before giving such information. I wish those who suffer the losses should sue them for the losses as they should be the one held responsible for such vulnerability. I also wish the way they attach it to crypto currency is just to make a statement as it surely more than that, people have their phone numbers linked to their bank accounts which means some other people would have suffered huge amount of loss from that end too. The people involved should be prosecuted and made to face the law but also those who made it possible in this case the service providers should also be made to pay.