Hacker Steals $1 Million Using Just a Phone Number

Bitcoinist-Hacker Steals $1 Million Using Just a Phone Number-In a technique recognized as “SIM swapping,” 21-year-old hacker Nicholas Truglia stole $1 million from a San Francisco executive and hacked the telephones of a couple of different Silicon Valley and blockchain executives.

A prison complaint filed this month in California’s state courtroom shows files of the ongoing case towards Nicholas Truglia. Truglia has been charged with 21 crimes that contain theft, fraud, embezzlement, and attempted grand theft.

The grand theft fee confronted by technique of way of Truglia relates to the hacker’s SIM change assault on a San Francisco resident named Robert Ross. The unsuspecting victim, Ross, abruptly misplaced telephone sign and headed to an Apple shop for assist earlier than contacting his supplier AT&T. He was too late, Truglia had already managed to steal $500,000 from the check owed Ross held with cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Gemini.

To carry out the SIM change and entry the executive’s phone, Truglia could possible have contacted AT&T and persuaded them he was Ross. Convincing them to reassign the man’s telephone quantity to 1 in every of his own devices. From there, Truglia could have been capable to bypass two-factor authentication safety processes, wherein a code is despatched by technique of way of textual content to a telephone to` entry the check owed of his victim.

Truglia’s Manhattan condo was searched and officers discovered that they had recovered $300,000 from a laptop tricky drive.

A NEW WAVE OF CRIME

Erin West, deputy district lawyer of Santa Clara County, defined the theft as side of a “new wave” of crime, talking to CNBC, adding:

It’s a brand new manner of stealing of money: They goal of us that they trust to have cryptocurrency.

The involvement of cryptocurrency within the theft had equally a merit and a drawback, it helped particularly in definitely deciding upon the transaction of the theft, but could possibly no longer have discovered the place the price range had been sent. West said:

In a few ways, it’s useful simply due to the fact we will see the place the cash goes — that’s the magnificence of the blockchain.

Truglia also hacked the telephones of Saswata Basu, CEO of 0Chain, a blockchain garage service. Gabrielle Katsnelson, co-founder of the startup SMBX, and one other executive Myles Danielson, had been also hacked The perps had been no longer able to entry the check owed so as to steal their funds.

Another Californian man, Michael Terpin, sued cellular supplier AT&T for negligence and $224 million when hackers SIM swapped his quantity to steal $24 million value of cryptocurrency.

SIM swapping is tricky to stay away from if hackers have acquired cellular telephone numbers and sufficient private news — typically handy at the darkish internet — to achieve the capacity of bypassing cellular communications safety while arranging the telephone quantity swap. Add one other purpose to the checklist of why private news must be guarded as thoroughly as possible. Not to point out balances of crypto and different currencies that need to be saved offline.

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: