SIM swap attack is a process through which a 3rd party gets an authorized access to your phone number, giving them access to your calls and messages on the SIM card.
SIM swap attack is an old scam trick current reigning again as a means of stealing from cryptocurrency investors' or traders' exchange account of those using their phone number as the authenticator to sign into their accounts.
It is reported that over $13M worth of cryptocurrency assets have been stolen from about 50 people just in 2023.
The scammers swap or steal your phone number from you to gain access to your cryptocurrency account and steal your fund.
How to protect yourself from such an attack includes
1. Keeping your funds in an uncompromised personal, non-custodial or hard wallet.
2. Use an app based 2FA authenticator like Auth, google authenticator, aegis and so on
3. Enable a SIM card PIN protecting your SIM card from getting accessed without your consent.
Stay safe.
There is an increased theft of sim, mostly to target people. When scammers knows that you are into crypto, they will target you as they will feel that you have one or two security patch with your phone number. This is why phone numbers are the littlest options to secure centralized exchanges or anything that has to do with your sim card. I think there are apps like Authy, not to be confused with google authy because Google Authy stored your security pin to google icloud while the other(AUTHY) doesn't do all of that, just your mobile number required for an account.
Number 3 doesn't gurantee anything. Some sim swap hackers sometimes have insider person inside telecommunication companies, so even if you used PIN on your sim, they can get your pin reset if the company has bad actors that jointly carryout this operations. The best solution to this is to disengage from using mobile number for extra security because you don't know a day that you may misplaced your phone without switching it off, your sim access without pin requirement if it doesn't switched off before they got it.
