Teen crook hacked into 75 phones and stole $1M in cryptocurrency: authorities

amishmanish

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Quote from: buwaytress on February 03, 2020, 04:09:45 AM

A bit late for me to this news but not sure why there hasn't been a good fix for this sim swapping tech, even though it's at least been two years since the first case. Also, not sure why it hasn't happened (or I haven't heard of it) outside of the US yet. Is it because sims have to be ID registered in SEA and when it's cloned the provider can detect 2 instances of it?

This kills 2FA. And makes me wonder if it's just safer remembering private keys and NOT using 2FA.

Sim-swapping tech or whatever they are calling it does happen outside USA..Also, it is sim-cloning because the hacker's sim imitates the original sim which basically goes offline. By the time people realize that its not just a network issue, they may have had their emails compromised and passwords changed.
In my country, there have been several of these sim frauds with people losing money from their bank accounts. The SIM card is linked with everything from the UID to bank account to the Tax identity of a person. Having one of these compromised is a nightmare scenario that I fear none of us are well prepared for.

I mean what really you can do if your network goes offline in the dead of the night? Are there really any mitigation strategies for this?

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Quote from: bitgolden on February 03, 2020, 03:51:19 AM

They should at least be charged to more than 150% of the actual damage they took so that the victims who lost their money in such hack can recover their loss as well as the authorized entity who is been taking legal action against such scammers too makes some benefits by penalizing the scammers.

It's pointless to charge ridiculous sums of money from the hackers when you don't know if they'll ever be able to cough it up. It's just as pointless as sentencing someone to hundreds of years of imprisonment.

Quote from: bitgolden on February 03, 2020, 03:51:19 AM

This would also create fear in minds of other people whoever though to do something huge to scam anyone. This would bring more security to the people who are linked with the bitcoins or cryptocurrencies.

In certain countries there is the death penalty. If the death penalty isn't enough to prevent people from committing crimes, what would a silly fine do that people will never be able to pay off? If you're already fined like millions, the next couple of millions in extra fines won't change anything at all so you can basically continue stealing from innocent people.

People just need to be even more careful about how they store/secure their cryptos. It's once again a sign that mass adoption is far away.

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Quote from: LogitechMouse on February 01, 2020, 04:16:27 AM

A wake up call for the cryptocurrency investors and holders.

What happened is a wake up call for them. He is just a young guy but he already did this. How much will the other younger people will do in the future. On the other hand, this is a warning for those holders that they must double their security when it comes to cryptos that they are holding because things like this can happen anytime. Hackers and scammers are lurking everywhere so our holdings must be secured properly.

TBH, he is a skilled young guy but what he did is just wrong. If he used his skills on the right way then this will not happen.

A bit late for me to this news but not sure why there hasn't been a good fix for this sim swapping tech, even though it's at least been two years since the first case. Also, not sure why it hasn't happened (or I haven't heard of it) outside of the US yet. Is it because sims have to be ID registered in SEA and when it's cloned the provider can detect 2 instances of it?

This kills 2FA. And makes me wonder if it's just safer remembering private keys and NOT using 2FA.

bitgolden

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Only few years of sentence would not be enough for such scammers but instead they should be heavily charged for breaking into someone other's mobile phone and stealing their private information. They should at least be charged to more than 150% of the actual damage they took so that the victims who lost their money in such hack can recover their loss as well as the authorized entity who is been taking legal action against such scammers too makes some benefits by penalizing the scammers.

This would also create fear in minds of other people whoever though to do something huge to scam anyone. This would bring more security to the people who are linked with the bitcoins or cryptocurrencies.

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Quote from: LogitechMouse on February 01, 2020, 04:16:27 AM

A wake up call for the cryptocurrency investors and holders.

What happened is a wake up call for them. He is just a young guy but he already did this. How much will the other younger people will do in the future. On the other hand, this is a warning for those holders that they must double their security when it comes to cryptos that they are holding because things like this can happen anytime. Hackers and scammers are lurking everywhere so our holdings must be secured properly.

TBH, he is a skilled young guy but what he did is just wrong. If he used his skills on the right way then this will not happen.

Youngsters usually have a tendency to make quick profits. They are the ones who might be having most greed into their minds. They would not find suitable jobs for them to earn that great income which they might find in scamming someone and this is what makes them get more advanced in scamming someone. This is the worst thing they ever do. Once they are caught, they might lose their further career and might end up behind bars.

But, they would not initially think about it if they are seeing huge profits in scamming anyone. Youngsters are most advanced and are slightly close to technology which allows them to be more futuristic but they should use their skills in the cause for betterment rather than hacking and stealing money from others.

LogitechMouse

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A wake up call for the cryptocurrency investors and holders.

What happened is a wake up call for them. He is just a young guy but he already did this. How much will the other younger people will do in the future. On the other hand, this is a warning for those holders that they must double their security when it comes to cryptos that they are holding because things like this can happen anytime. Hackers and scammers are lurking everywhere so our holdings must be secured properly.

TBH, he is a skilled young guy but what he did is just wrong. If he used his skills on the right way then this will not happen.

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Quote from: The Sceptical Chymist on January 31, 2020, 11:36:11 AM

Quote from: Kemarit on December 20, 2019, 06:18:12 AM

It's just a matter of time before these bad eggs are going to be caught, either they make a mistakes or authorities are simply hunting them down.

Yeah, not always. What about all of these exchange hacks? That 7000BTC Binance hack was never solved that I know of. How about that huge ETH hack that resulted in the fork a couple of years back? I remember that huge debacle in general if not in specifics, and I don't think the culprit was ever caught.

The Binance hacked of 7000 BTC has not moved ever since:

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/e8b406091959700dbffcff30a60b190133721e5c39e89bb5fe23c5a554ab05ea

And I'm sure a lot of eyes are looking into it and waiting for the hackers to make the mistake of either moving it to an exchange or a mixing service and all Binance will do is to contact that services and request to block the transactions.

Quote from: The Sceptical Chymist on January 31, 2020, 11:36:11 AM

The fact is, most crypto crooks get away with it--at least from what I've seen over the years. This guy was probably caught because he was really young and screwed up and left a trail that led the cops to his door. Too bad more idiots like him aren't apprehended.

Yeah, I would agree that he was too green in this game and that's why he was caught.

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Quote from: Kemarit on December 20, 2019, 06:18:12 AM

It's just a matter of time before these bad eggs are going to be caught, either they make a mistakes or authorities are simply hunting them down.

Yeah, not always. What about all of these exchange hacks? That 7000BTC Binance hack was never solved that I know of. How about that huge ETH hack that resulted in the fork a couple of years back? I remember that huge debacle in general if not in specifics, and I don't think the culprit was ever caught.

The fact is, most crypto crooks get away with it--at least from what I've seen over the years. This guy was probably caught because he was really young and screwed up and left a trail that led the cops to his door. Too bad more idiots like him aren't apprehended.

bryant.coleman

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Quote from: Broly46 on December 20, 2019, 07:33:01 AM

This sim swapping hack is seriously horrible, nearly all services use sim ID for verification, it’s just a matter of time the entire banking to be plagued with sim swapping hacks too, any counter measure would be futile.

A few days back, I had to swap my 3G SIM for one which had 4G. It went well, but I was very concerned. As a precaution, the telecom provider blocked the SMS facility for 24-hours. I think this prevented a lot of scam attempts, as in the majority of the cases the criminals are making use of the SMS loophole. But two questions are unanswered here. How did the criminal came to know that the victims had this much money in their cryptocurrency wallet? And secondly, how he was able to hack the Google authenticator?

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Sim swapping could really be a problem. If a teenager could do that then we can easily say that other people can do sim swapping. Just imagine the damage that this could do and even if our accounts do have 2 factor authentication, it will put our accounts in jeopardy. It could compromise a lot of accounts and get personal informations. They should take preventive measures immediately.

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Quote from: Kemarit on December 20, 2019, 06:18:12 AM

Another day, another bad guy has been caught:

Quote

An alleged teen crook stole the identities of 75 people and swiped $1 million in cryptocurrency — all from the comfort of his Brooklyn apartment, authorities said.

Yousef Selassie, 19, used a sophisticated SIM-swapping scheme to take over the phones of people in 20 different states between Jan. 20 and May 19, 2019, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

He allegedly transferred his victims’ phone numbers to his own iPhones, enabling him to reset their passwords and gain access to their Gmail, cryptocurrency and other accounts. Meanwhile, his victims’ phones would suddenly go offline.

The stolen $1 million came from just two victims, authorities said. Selassie was arrested Dec. 5 in Corona, California, and extradited to New York.

He was arraigned Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, where he pleaded not guilty to 87 counts of grand larceny, identity theft and other charges. Justice Mark Dwyer ordered him to surrender his passport and check in weekly with a supervised release program. The judge did not set bail.

Authorities executed search warrants on Selassie’s Brooklyn and California residences, where they seized half a dozen iPhones, two Rolex watches, a monogrammed Gucci wallet and numerous pieces of high-end jewelry, according to court papers.

https://nypost.com/2019/12/18/teen-crook-hacked-into-75-phones-and-stole-1m-in-cryptocurrency-authorities/

It's just a matter of time before these bad eggs are going to be caught, either they make a mistakes or authorities are simply hunting them down. 5-10 years sentence will be enough for this criminals? What do you think?

This kind of act is pretty lame, even if they stole millions of dollars still it's useless if they will get caught. And this kind of news should be spread everywhere so anyone will be aware that scamming is not a good idea especially that the technology right now is keep on evolving and you can be identified easily by the authorities.

And I hope it will also evolve to crypto, so the hackers will think twice before they will commit any crime as I haven't read any news that there is/are hackers that were jailed because of hacking like the hacker of big exchanges especially the penetrator of binance.

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Quote from: Yaunfitda on December 20, 2019, 08:52:19 PM

Yes, he should be put to jail minimum ten years. Because he really deserves that for stealing someone's money and spending it like for jewelries, lol, total jerk he is. I do hope that people in crypto will always find justice when we loss our money from this online hackers. They really making a run on us and we all know that billions of our money are being stolen already since inception.

He's 19, intelligent but dumb at the same time. Dumbness might wear away with age, but there's no way he's going to be the same after 10 years of jail. I think 5 years is enough to fully put him through the purge without fcking up the rest of his life. And if this lesson won't teach him enough, he'll do it gain and then should be locked up for a real sentense

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They got caught because they were greed. You see what I'm saying about scammers. They never know when to stop. You would think someone would be happy with that amount of money but oh no they must want more. If this person stopped earlier they would have not been caught. Now they have nothing and probably getting jail time. Not very clever. It means nothing if you get caught.

isaac_clarke22

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I always thought that having 2fa provides the most of the security already, since it is like gonna be in contact directly to your phone and that would mean like no one would have access to it.

I heard these schemes already quite few times before, and it seems quite rare as of now but because it can do damage this big already, given that it is already done by an underage dude, exchanges, online crypto wallet services, as well as any online service that requires mobile phone numbers as part of verification process should at least add up more layer of security.

I am not sure if these hackers got a workaround with other security features like OTP authentication, but that seems the only alternative for me as of now.

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I heard about a new kind of data theft using pu lic USB charging ports. Some of you might have heard or read about it. This kind of hacking or data theft is slowly becoming a major issues. It is better to always carry a power bank whenever you are travelling out.

The scammer use the charging port of your mobile to setup malware or virus in phone.

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Quote from: FanatMonet on January 24, 2020, 11:44:47 PM

Probably the best option to protect against such attacks is to have 3 SIM cards, 1 for use in everyday life, 1 for mail, and 1 more for two-factor authentication on a cryptocurrency exchange. Even if 1 of them is hacked, this should not cause critical damage.

It still depends, if your sim card that was hacked is the one that you mainly use for authentication then your accounts are still compromised. That is why I highly do not trust mobile systems to have all of my finds, I just use them for withdrawing amounts and I advice that instead of using mobile phones to store your cryptocurrencies, why not buy a ledger or trezor, there, they can't access your keys because it is written and is outside of the vulnerable system of internet.

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Scammers' intelligence exceeds ordinary human intelligence and what we think is very safe but scammers can penetrate it in any way, and so far there are various kinds of scammers in different ways to get what is not their right and harm many people.
and what must be done by the government is to give a very harsh punishment to scammers, and to provide a deterrent effect for new scammers and even though it is difficult but it will minimize fraud in the crypto world.

FanatMonet

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Probably the best option to protect against such attacks is to have 3 SIM cards, 1 for use in everyday life, 1 for mail, and 1 more for two-factor authentication on a cryptocurrency exchange. Even if 1 of them is hacked, this should not cause critical damage.

stabledev

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2 factor authentication is a must these days. Don't put all your security on your SIM. Anyone who knows your number and is enough of a social engineer can just clone your SIM and get your coins.

HarmonyA

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Sim swapping hack is genuinely horrendous, almost all administrations use sim ID for confirmation, it's simply a question of time the whole banking to be tormented with sim swapping hacks as well.
We need palliative measures to protect our information from this ill, less more criminals would make use of it to render people penniless.

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