Quote from: https://medium.com/coinmonks/the-most-expensive-lesson-of-my-life-details-of-sim-port-hack-35de11517124
I lost north of $100,000 last Wednesday. It evaporated over a 24-hour time span in a “SIM port attack” that drained my Coinbase account.
Sim port attack or Sim swap attack is when your associated phone number in your other accounts will port to another sim card or another phone that is controlled by the attacker and they are free to use your phone number now since your phone is connected to different accounts, they will reset the password or use the SMS authentication using the phone number then they are freely easily to open your account.
Who are authorize to port your sim/phone number to another device?
It is only your carrier provider, e.g. AT&T, Smart Communications, T-MOBILE, etc.
-Some attacker here will contact on your carrier provider and some will use some of your personal information just to prove that they are real you.
-I experienced to upgrade my sim card before, in my country, I just went on the store branch of my carrier provider then provide 1 valid id then that's all. I don't know they allowed via phone call.
- Avoid storing your coins or funds for long term in a centralized exchange.
- Avoid using centralized cryptocurrency wallet.
- User hardware wallet or cold wallet.
I have some questions:
1. Is there any carrier provider that allowed you to change your sim card or port to another device via phone call only?
2. If this case happens, can we blame our carrier provider on this or take some legal actions?
and what more tips or advice you can give to avoid this kind of attack.
Sources/References:
The Most Expensive Lesson Of My Life: Details of SIM port hack
SIM swap attack (SIM intercept attack)
Read more:
This is how you can protect your cryptocurrencies from hackers