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Hackers sent to jail for stealing over $2M USD in cryptocurrency with SIM hijacking attack

Hackers sent to jail for stealing over $2M USD in cryptocurrency with SIM hijacking attack. According to IICS’s web application security course, a group of hackers known as “The Community” has been accused by the U.S. authorities for allegedly having made a fraud known as “SIM card hijacking”, in complicity with three Employees of a mobile phone company.

The six members of the group of hackers would
have participated in identity theft of the clients of the telephone company,
abusing the stolen information to extract cryptocurrency
(attack variant also known as SIM
swap
).

“The SIM hijacking/exchange is a variant of
identity fraud that exploits a fragile point in cybersecurity, victims’ mobile
phone numbers”, explains the web application security course experts.

Attackers take control of the victim’s phone
number to redirect traffic generated by calls, SMS messages, etc., through
devices under the control of hackers. A phone company support employee was
tricked into transferring the victim’s phone number to a new SIM card owned by
hackers.

Hackers used this SIM card to generate an
access point to the victim’s online accounts (email, cloud storage,
cryptocurrency wallets, etc.), mention the web application security courses.

After kidnapping the victim’s phone number, the
hackers took control of the victim’s Criptomoneda portfolios, stealing about
2.5 million, 000. In addition, three employees of the company were identified
as accomplices of the group of hackers.

According to U.S. law, defendants face a
sentence of up to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit electronic fraud,
mention specialists from the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS).

The six hackers and three ex-employees of the
telephone company, between 19 and 28 years old, are still waiting for the trial
to begin to decide their future. 

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