[HN Gopher] SIM swapper abducted, beaten, held for ransom
___________________________________________________________________
SIM swapper abducted, beaten, held for ransom
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 143 points
Date : 2022-09-21 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (krebsonsecurity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (krebsonsecurity.com)
| willcipriano wrote:
| In one of Sid Myers games he has a quote that always stuck with
| me "Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may
| vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant. "
| and you can watch that play out here.
|
| Crypto prices are falling and violence around that community goes
| up. Corporations see the economy going into a recession and start
| layoffs. I wonder if more fraud, wage theft and illegal tax
| avoidance happens during economic down turns as well?
| nerdponx wrote:
| Alpha Centauri? I have a faint memory of Nwabudike Morgan
| saying a line like that in one of the early game "milestone"
| cutscenes.
| simiones wrote:
| CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Centauri Monopoly"
| snake_plissken wrote:
| -Nwabudike Morgan, diamond tycoon
| rudyfink wrote:
| Adverse issues (e.g., fraud) tend to get noticed more in
| downturns, because, generally, everyone cares more about the
| details in those times. In times of plenty, they also occur
| (perhaps even as much), but people are more willing to let the
| same behavior pass because everything is going well.
|
| At the risk of stepping too much into the meta, I wouldn't be
| surprised if there are some innate behaviors from evolution for
| responding to downturns (e.g., caring more about fairness).
| willcipriano wrote:
| The innate behavior idea makes some sense. One example:
| Unemployed married men are something like twice as likely to
| be divorced as men who are employed. People typically don't
| say "I divorced him beacuse he doesn't make any money" but
| suddenly behaviors that were tolerable previously become deal
| breakers once a man loses his job.
| notch656a wrote:
| Or you know the gravy train is over and you can get 50%
| before it drains down to nothing + 20% of his imputed
| former income drained from the 50% he has remaining + a new
| man with a job.
| Andrex wrote:
| Pravin Lal's speech stuck with me even more, it seemed
| prescient and relevant for how the mid/late-2000s and early
| 2010s played out.
|
| "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final
| century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against
| tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose
| their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and
| vitality, but the free nation gradually constructing its grip
| on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism.
| Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in
| his heart he dreams himself your master."
| gnramires wrote:
| It's never as simple as simple economic models suggest :)
|
| Some studies indicate poor people are more altruistic:
|
| https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_poor_give_...
| meany wrote:
| I won't express an opinion on who is more altruistic, [edit]
| because I don't think I have sufficient data to draw a broad
| conclusion. Studies on college campus like these always seem
| pretty weak to draw societal wide conclusions from. These
| tiny experiments are usually conducted on college students
| and often are not reproduce-able.
|
| "In one of these experiments, the researchers, led by
| doctoral student Paul Piff, gave participants the opportunity
| to share $10 with an anonymous stranger. A few days earlier,
| the participants had all filled out a questionnaire in which
| they reported their socioeconomic status. The results showed
| that people who had placed themselves lower on the social
| scale were actually more generous than upper class
| participants were."
|
| This strikes me as a pretty weak study to extrapolate to any
| society wide conclusions.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Having spent my childhood in one of the poorer corners of
| the globe, it tracks with what I experienced, for what it's
| worth. When folks don't have much, group sharing any bounty
| received, and being the recipient of others', is how people
| survive.
| notch656a wrote:
| It may also be the case that a community more inclined
| towards socialism ('sharing any bounty') doesn't fair as
| well, and is disproportionately likely to be poor. Not
| saying that's the case, but it's one possible explanation
| of why poor communities would disproportionately exhibit
| that behavior.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I honestly think you have it in reverse. If you and your
| community are poor, the _only_ way to survive is through
| cooperation. The folks that didn 't participate? You
| don't see them _because they didn 't survive_.
|
| So yes, you see cooperative behaviors in the poorest of
| communities. Because other behaviors at that income level
| are incompatible with life!
| notch656a wrote:
| I noticed you countered by using 'cooperation', a word
| found nowhere in my above comment. I do not think this is
| an accident, and calling me to have it 'in the reverse'
| of a word I never said is no doubt a deliberate and
| misleading framing on your part, although I admit it is
| rather clever
| Baeocystin wrote:
| ? I used cooperation as a synonym for sharing the bounty,
| which is think is perfectly reasonable. Please assume
| good faith in discussions here. HN is run differently
| than most internet fora.
| notch656a wrote:
| >Please assume good faith in discussions here. HN is run
| differently than most internet fora.
|
| Then I am dissapointed you used this bad faith framing
| that you find unaccepttable in HN. In no good faith
| discussion can you entirely swap out the wording to
| something your counterparty never said, and say the thing
| they never said they got in reverse. Although it is
| entertaining how quickly you fell back on an appeal to
| authority of that's not how things are "run" here. Of
| course if you want to continue your baid faith
| discussion, such as inventing words others got 'in
| reverse', by all means you have some great advice of
| seeking other 'fora'.
|
| > I used cooperation as a synonym for sharing the bounty,
|
| Sharing a bounty could potentially by cooperative (or
| uncooperative, if it were forced). On the other hand,
| using the word this way seems to allude not sharing the
| bounty is being 'uncooperative.' This would be wrong as
| there are cooperative systems that do not rely on
| 'sharing any bounty' and instead rely on a cooperative
| system of 'selfish' voluntary trade. The sleight of hand
| here is you tried to by definiton (or 'synonym') exclude
| the latter out of being considered 'cooperative'.
|
| >cooperation as a synonym for sharing the bounty, which
| is think is perfectly reasonable.
|
| I find this entirely unreasonable when it is framed such
| that not 'sharing any bounty' would be uncooperative. For
| instance, if I have a bounty and a group of people try to
| forcefully take some to share with themselves, I would
| call those people the uncooperative ones, even though the
| effect would be 'sharing' any bouny which you say is a
| synonym for cooperation.
|
| Of course, if you never meant to allude not 'sharing any
| bounty' is uncooperative, things might be different, but
| since you already said you considered 'sharing any
| bounty' a synonym to cooperation I think it's too late to
| make that assertion.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Notch, accusing someone of "deliberate and misleading
| framing" arguments because they didn't use the exact,
| precise language that you did is assuming bad faith.
|
| Your argument is weak, obtuse and unproductive. He
| clearly explained why you're wrong by explaining a
| culture he was deeply familiar with, and your response is
| a faux-intellectual straw man.
|
| If you can't deal with the fact that you're not the
| suppository of all wisdom, please get off HN and go
| outside.
| notch656a wrote:
| Clearly my argument 'one possible explanation of why poor
| communities would disproportionately exhibit that
| behavior' is weak and one saying literally 'other
| behaviors at that income level are incompatible with
| life' is not? I've merely made a conjecture, I find it
| extremely weak, obtuse, and unproductive to just say welp
| 'incompatible with life' as if that is that.
|
| My argument was a mere possibility. The counter argument
| was a factual statement about literal 'incompatible with
| life.' The latter is much stronger, in fact my
| counterparty made a statement much more closer to how one
| who believes they are the suppository of all wisdom would
| behave.
|
| Going back and phrasing this as "sharing any bounty"
| being synonymous with "cooperation", and then using
| cooperation in connection with saying I got it in
| reverse, is about as bad faith as it gets.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Why are you even still arguing about this?
|
| You've already demonstrated that you don't know how to
| play the "spirited debate" game with other people, and
| for that reason nobody wants to play it with you.
|
| If you want to get the last word in so you feel like
| you've "won", go ahead. I'll quiver before your superior
| and enlightened intellect.
| leephillips wrote:
| I think I prefer the method used in _The Matrix_.
| notch656a wrote:
| If you're poor because predators (like police, the courts, a
| vindictive ex, whatever) take whatever wealth you have, then
| it might also make sense to be extremely benevolent with
| whatever you have before you get stolen. Then you'll get the
| social capital and when your neighbor has a good day you'll
| get some of that too. Almost like a method of decentralized
| banking.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That makes perfect rational sense to me. You would expect
| people who may come to rely on charity or who have relied on
| it in the past to be more charitable now.
| rhodorhoades wrote:
| I've been to over 40 countries and I can tell you this is
| true. The people that have the least are some of the most
| caring people, who will insist on feeding you even when they
| don't have much food to give.
|
| It is economic disparity that creates violence. Only when
| villas are in reach of a small poor town do you start to get
| petty muggings, scams and murders.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Can attest to this, numerous times I have been invited to
| dinner, helped tremendously for no reward and met with just
| pure humility from dalits (untouchables) when backpacking
| in India.
|
| I am not claiming that people from other castes behaved
| badly, in contrary, but when you see how little those
| people have (ie 3 generations, or 10 members of family
| sleeping in 1 room 3x3m and that was their whole 'house' -
| just 4 super basic walls with no roof, nothing else).
| Coming back to my relatively crappy eastern european
| country where people constantly complain how poor they are
| compared to ie germany made me feel sad, ashamed and badly
| out of touch with my folks...
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >It is economic disparity that creates violence. Only when
| villas are in reach of a small poor town do you start to
| get petty muggings, scams and murders.
|
| I remember hearing about this in a Jordan Peterson video.
| The correlation between economic inequality and young make
| violence is apparently one of the strongest in all of
| sociology, and still applies regardless of the size of the
| geographical boundary you draw.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Historic studies on altruism often failed to account for all
| costs or benefits of certain actions. This led to results
| showing a great deal of altruism that later research
| overturned when scenarios were better crafted to control
| costs and benefits. It has been a while since I read the
| specifics but one example involved sales people who appeared
| to act altruistic and not take advantage of a seemingly
| oblivious shopper. Once the study was changed so that the
| specific sales person who took advantage of the shopper
| wasn't known to the researchers, only how often it happened,
| the altruism disappeared. There was a social currency of
| "appearing to be ethical" that was worth more than taking
| advantage of the shopper. Once that social currency was
| removed, the sales people reevaluated which options were most
| optimal.
|
| This is all to say that any studies on altruism need to be
| scrutinized to see if some benefit or cost was missed in the
| experiment design.
| Grimburger wrote:
| > Crypto prices are falling and violence around that community
| goes up
|
| Claims like that need a source to back them up
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Not to speak for them, but there are things to cite in the
| article:
|
| > Prosecutors say the defendant fired a handgun into a
| Pennsylvania home, and helped to torch another residence in
| the state with a Molotov Cocktail -- all allegedly in service
| of a beef over stolen cryptocurrency.
|
| > Earlier this month, three men in the United Kingdom were
| arrested for attempting to assault a local man and steal his
| virtual currencies.
|
| It's not particularly strong evidence that this violence is
| caused by a falling value but it's also not entirely
| unreasonable to be left with that perspective.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Mainly this bit: "Foreshadow's experience is the latest
| example of a rapidly escalating cycle of physical violence
| that is taking hold of criminal SIM-swapping communities
| online. Earlier this month, KrebsOnSecurity detailed how
| multiple SIM-swapping Telegram channels are now replete
| with "violence-as-a-service" offerings, wherein denizens of
| the underground hire themselves out to perform various
| forms of physical violence -- from slashing tires and
| throwing a brick through someone's window, to conducting
| drive-by shootings, firebombings and home invasions."
| lemmiwinks wrote:
| > "Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may
| vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant.
| "
|
| That quote is discussed a length on this wonderful blog (like
| others said, it's from SMAC):
| https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/first-impressio...
| criddell wrote:
| I've started reading a book about systems theory and and that's
| what the quote made me think of. One flow is restricted and so
| another increases. I wish I had read the book a long time ago
| because I've barely started it and I'm already looking at
| things in a new way.
| maayank wrote:
| What book? Sounds interesting.
| criddell wrote:
| _Thinking in Systems_ by Meadows.
|
| The book isn't terribly long and so far it's pretty easy to
| read.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Gangster attacks gangster. Comes with the territory. Maybe he'll
| be of some benefit in scaring others out of doing such things.
| jrockway wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if criminals
| had access to a court-like dispute resolution system. Obviously
| the details are too complicated to ever work out, but there
| would probably a lot less assault and murder.
| khazhoux wrote:
| This is basically the premise of The Godfather.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZHsmb4ezEk
| rolph wrote:
| criminals have a code of behavior, and a hierarchy. if you
| look at 1% motorcycle clubs they have a code of behavior
| among each other.
|
| messing with someones deal[competition] is against that code.
|
| there is a murmuring of the commons that roughly equivocates
| some sort of due process, mostly pronounciations of a persons
| character, and qualifying an alibi.
|
| when it comes to prison time there is hierarchy, depending on
| the nature of the crime, and who "co-workers" are, and
| unfortunately race often figures in it as well.
| [deleted]
| ianceicys wrote:
| That's strawberry jelly in that photo if I've ever seen it.
| sparrish wrote:
| Yeah, dried blood on clothing looks brown... not that I'd know
| that. I heard from a friend, yeah.
| e40 wrote:
| Yeah, it doesn't look like real blood.
| martin_a wrote:
| I'm with you on that. I did kickboxing and other things for
| some years, so I've seen some blood from blunt force.
|
| Blood dries quite fast and/or gets absorbed by the fibers of
| the clothing and will then turn into a darker shade of red.
|
| Blood has a rather low viscosity. If you beat somebody properly
| up, there will be lots of little splashes of blood, this looks
| very "drippy", almost like paint that dropped down. If he's
| bleeding like that from the mouth, he'd most likely have
| swallowed some blood coughed it up and all over him. The
| sweatshirt would look very different at least.
|
| If you beat someone up, you'll also have bruises all over his
| face. Normally you'd see green and blue eyes and bruises on his
| face, especially his cheeks. Some slightly missed hits always
| happen, especially when the opponent tries to duck or move
| away. This looks too "precise" and accurate for some random
| beat up.
| Test0129 wrote:
| The criminal world is dangerous. When large sums of money are
| involved it becomes even more dangerous.
|
| Seems like a kid who had no idea what he was getting into
| suddenly found out how dangerous things can become. It's hard to
| feel bad for the "victim". Not only were they a "plug" for a
| crime that gains complete control of someone's life, they're also
| a criminal.
| DrWumbo wrote:
| I see a lot of commenters here talking about how they have no
| sympathy for the kid. I think it's important to remember that
| it's hard out there these days. A life of crime may not be the
| only option available, but it becomes more and more appealing as
| access to education or training gets more difficult to afford,
| inflation increase outpaces wage increases, workers rights aren't
| expanded.
|
| Dehumanizing criminals is a very privileged way of approaching
| the world.
|
| What we have here is a child who was failed by society.
| throwawayx134ax wrote:
| Flip that around. In a very real sense the criminal either
| chose to dehumanize his victims, or ignore the suffering he was
| causing (arguably worse). "Do unto others as you would have
| them do unto you".
|
| Also, some people are just shitheads, and I don't think we can
| say with any degree of certainty where Foreshadow sits.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| A person who boldly states their lack of sympathy is acting
| with a fair degree of certainty in regards to what kind of
| person they're talking about.
| DrWumbo wrote:
| There's a lot of shitheads out there for sure and when one
| commits crimes in which there are victims one makes a moral
| decision to inflict some kind of harm. Even with that, you
| can never truly know another person and categorizing who
| committed crime out of necessity and who is morally devoid is
| near impossible. I think we tend to judge our peers harsher
| than we judge our corporate overlords.
|
| Imo this type of crime is a symptom of our broken society
| more than a symptom of a broken person.
|
| Copaganda and western hero-villain stories teach us from a
| young age that there has to be a bad guy who needs to suffer
| for their actions.
| martin_a wrote:
| > What we have here is a child who was failed by society.
|
| I really embrace your faith in humanity and trying to
| understand and explain what might have led to this.
|
| But in the end, he chose organized crime. That's where really
| terrible stuff happens, you know that, if you choose it.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Judging from the photo, the kid has fetal alcohol syndrome.
| He likely came into the world with few choices.
| DrWumbo wrote:
| Yeah there's obvious reasons why organized crime is
| dangerous, but it's designed to lure people in with quick
| money/protection/sense of identity and then trap them.
|
| The same goes for any behavior where one knows adverse
| consequences beforehand. I remember I bummed my first
| cigarette from a stranger one day when I was stressed out as
| a teenager. When I got hooked on the addictive properties and
| irreversibility damaged my lungs should there have been no
| room for empathy?
|
| I'm not saying choosing to view this kid as a victim solves
| anything or that people should share my view. I want more
| voices spreading it so people can see there's another way to
| see the world.
|
| And fwiw like most people my attitude flips 180 when I'm the
| victim of a crime. I am after all, only human.
| j-krieger wrote:
| I agree. People who are born wealthy routinely choose crime,
| if sometimes for no reason other than adrenaline rush or pure
| greed.
| zac23or wrote:
| > I think it's important to remember that it's hard out there
| these days. A life of crime may not be the only option
| available, but it becomes more and more appealing as access to
| education or training gets more difficult to afford
|
| No, no. It is a very discriminatory view. Many very rich people
| are criminals. I'm from a very poor neighborhood, from a third
| world country. Many of my friends got into crime and died. Many
| more are hardworking, in my experience it is easier to find a
| criminal who was born rich than a criminal who was born poor .
| I don't have much formal education. But using books that was
| going to waste, I learned programming, etc. And Today it is
| much easier to learn ANYTHING.
|
| > Dehumanizing criminals is a very privileged way of
| approaching the world. What we have here is a child who was
| failed by society.
|
| It's not Dehumanization. Someone works hard, buys something
| after years of work and gets robbed overnight. When someone
| defends the criminal in the first place, he is ignoring the guy
| who suffered without doing absolutely anything to deserve it.
| It's normal to hate the criminal.
|
| And the poor hate criminals. Defending criminals is a very
| privileged way of approaching the world.
|
| I am not a favor to kill criminals, etc. But sometimes when you
| get what you're looking for. And defending very bad behavior is
| not good for anyone, neither the boy nor society.
| [deleted]
| imchillyb wrote:
| > a lackey for a cybercriminal group that specializes in
| cryptocurrency thefts was beaten and kidnapped last week by a
| rival cybercrime gang.
|
| Play that game, and a person is fortunate to survive it.
|
| In other news: Water is wet. Crime groups have rivals. The
| federal government taxes individuals, corporations, and other
| governments.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I read the headline and laughed. SIM swappers will get no pity
| from me. If you play with fire long enough, you'll get burned.
| fatjokes wrote:
| As Mike Erhmentraut would say, he's part of the game.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| mikece wrote:
| Agreed. I'm glad the kid wasn't killed but I cannot feel sorry
| for a criminal when something bad happens to them. Hopefully
| this guy straightens out his life going forward.
| andrepd wrote:
| Can we stop with the cliche phrase already? That's one of the
| "reddit ready-made phrases" that annoy me the most, tbh
| chuckSu wrote:
| pc86 wrote:
| What does the phrase have to do with reddit? I've heard
| 80-year-old relatives say that.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Correlation is not causation
|
| I did nazi that coming
|
| Get out of here with your facts and logic
|
| Play stupid games win stupid prizes
|
| Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
|
| There. We're all used up. If you want to make a comment
| like this, you can just link this one instead. Your 80 year
| old relatives can just say "FW: FW: FW: Check out this link
| on the Hackers New". I gotchu fam.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >I did nazi that coming
|
| is the only one I associate with reddit in particular.
| renewiltord wrote:
| True, but that's because in America they just call
| American Football "Football"
| jzellis wrote:
| The heart veritably breaks.
| adastra22 wrote:
| As a victim of these gangs, I'm sorry but I feel no sympathy.
| They swapped my sim and called in a SWAT raid on my house while
| they attempted to take over all my digital accounts. I'm lucky it
| didn't end worse for me or my family.
| manholio wrote:
| This type of result is unavoidable with anonymous cryptocurrency,
| and it will only get worse if we continue to accept anonymous
| transfers as a legitimate source of income. The new European MiCA
| regulation goes a long way into establishing traceability in
| crypto-transactions, but is still short of what's required.
|
| Essentially, the whole current lot of cryptocurrencies should be
| detached from financial markets because they operate, by design,
| like a large money laundry service.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| your encription might use sha256, but is it resilient to a
| baseball bat?
| staringback wrote:
| SHA256 is a hash algorithm, not encryption.
| ailef wrote:
| Is this kind of nitpicking really necessary especially when
| the point GP was making is completely unrelated to the exact
| nature of the algorithm (it applies to both)?
| ajg36 wrote:
| Yes, otherwise others might learn something that's wrong.
| ozim wrote:
| Well hashing algorithms are resilient against baseball
| attacks, I am not able to reverse SHA256 even if you beat
| me to death.
|
| I think it is important distinction for criminals to know,
| killing someone because one doesn't understand difference
| between AES256 and SHA256 is bad outcome for everyone
| involved.
| ailef wrote:
| Well, you usually know your password without the need to
| crack the hash, so...
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Note the picture in the post is very graphic FYI.
| viktorcode wrote:
| Just wanted to remind everyone that insisting on using SMS for
| 2FA and for notifications instead of push notifications is a
| deliberate inaction on the part of service providers that creates
| vulnerabilities and whole sprawling crime underworld.
| binkHN wrote:
| Wow--I didn't know this stuff was being done. While this has been
| shouted from rooftops for a while now, BANKS and related are
| still using SMS to verify things--this is yet another shout as to
| why SMS should not be used for 2FA.
| DrWumbo wrote:
| I think part of the challenge is increasing tech literacy in
| America. Most of my friends and family have trouble
| understanding password managers or hardware 2fa.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| I think you're overestimating the problem. Here in the UK,
| banks send out physical 2FA devices (card readers, little
| calculator style devices, etc) for those who don't want
| something eg linked a smart phone app. They're easy enough to
| use for anyone who can use online banking, and those who
| don't need or want online banking don't need them.
| DrWumbo wrote:
| I think you're overestimating Americans
|
| We got credit cards with chips way after Europe. We don't
| have anything close to GDPR because enough voters don't
| understand data privacy (and ofc regulatory capture).
| random42_ wrote:
| Also: sending a check by mail is still a thing.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Or phone numbers should be treated as infrastructure and
| given legal protections above simply being at the whim of
| T-Mobile/ATT/Verizon employees.
| neoncontrails wrote:
| There's reasons to be optimistic that the solution to
| preventing this type of attack (which is so troubling precisely
| because the difficulty of patching it is utterly colossal)
| might yet be around the corner. Band-aid mitigations, like
| programmable eSIMs and tethering one's phone to an online
| identity (as Google Fi does) have existed for a while now,
| neither of which is an ideal solution. I was surprised recently
| though by what sounds like credible speculation that Apple's
| next iPhone release may drop the SIM card slot completely. If
| true, I'm guessing that could be the Zugzwang that will force
| mainstream wireless carriers, notoriously allergic to investing
| in their own infrastructure, to finally make the needed
| upgrades to achieve a post-SIM card future -- much in the same
| way, I'm hoping, that the elimination of the audio jack forced
| the adoption of Bluetooth on even the most viscerally reluctant
| consumer.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29701887
| jelled wrote:
| It's not speculation. The iPhone 14/pro dropped the sim card
| for models sold in the US.
| gw99 wrote:
| This is the criminal cyberpunk future we've been reading about
| since the 80s...
| scottmcdot wrote:
| Note that SMS for 2FA is very different to SMS for account
| recovery. E.g., remove your phone number as a recovery method
| from Gmail.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| I am currently in the middle of an identity theft attack. It all
| started with someone trying this SIM swapping attack on me.
| Luckily Verizon prevented it.
|
| After failing to get my number they still were able to access my
| debit card. Since they didn't have my number they initiated a
| text bomb attack where I received hundreds of signup and 2FA
| texts. Buried in the middle of those was a withdraw alert from my
| bank.
|
| Luckily I spotted it.
|
| All in all this has been a very bad experience for me. While I do
| feel bad for the violence inflicted on this guy I wish there was
| something more we could do as a society to prevent people from
| following in his footsteps.
| smhmd wrote:
| What steps do you think you'll be taking to never have to deal
| with this again?
| brightball wrote:
| Ideally, Verizon should be able to give an "in person only"
| option for a SIM swap. And that's the default.
| latchkey wrote:
| Wouldn't a 'plug' working in a store work around that?
| doctoboggan wrote:
| I've "locked" my number and it requires a transfer PIN. I
| hope Verizon's systems won't allow a transfer without
| that pin even with a malicious employee, however I
| wouldn't be surprised if they are able to override it.
|
| Apparently my attacker had a fake ID with my name and
| their photo. It's possible a store employee could
| override the transfer lock if they are sufficiently
| convinced it's really me.
| latchkey wrote:
| I've heard many cases of transfer locks being broken.
| From what I understand, it is even possible to simjack at
| a higher level than the individual telco.
|
| Thus, I don't even bother with stuff like this, the only
| solution in my eyes is to not rely on SMS 2FA and if you
| absolutely have to, at least use a GV number. While GV
| isn't totally secure either, at least it is disconnected
| a tiny bit from my cell number and doesn't have humans
| backing it (we all know that Google never answers the
| support phone).
| igetspam wrote:
| There's also a "run in, punch a guy in the face and steal
| the tablet" method. Can't get around that either.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I have this setup with my carrier (not Verizon) and it
| didn't stop me from being victim of a sim swap attack twice
| thereafter.
| e40 wrote:
| Freeze your credit at all three of the companies. It's free.
| It's not that painful to open it when you need it. Everyone
| should do this ASAP.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| First I "locked" my phone number disabling transfers
| (although I suspect this is vulnerable to social engineering
| attacks).
|
| I have also frozen my credit with the three credit bureaus
| (the attacker also opened a new line of credit in my name)
|
| I am also closing the bank account that was compromised. They
| aren't giving me any info but I suspect the attacker got my
| debit card via social engineering. It was a new account and I
| hadn't even received my debit card yet.
|
| I have a subscription to a credit monitoring service as well
| which has proven its worth in this situation.
|
| Otherwise honestly I am not sure what to do. It sucks to know
| this person has my name, social, phone, and other info. I
| basically plan to keep my credit frozen indefinitely. I am
| also disabling text based 2FA for me and my wife wherever
| possible.
| ajhurliman wrote:
| You need to give your ssn to so many people over your
| lifetime and you're essentially trusting that all of them
| will be trustworthy and secure with it.
|
| This could be easily solved with public key cryptography,
| but it would also confuse so many people it would be hard
| to implement.
|
| If there's an upside to the crypto craze, maybe it's
| teaching people about cryptography basics.
| troon-lover wrote:
| ehPReth wrote:
| This is a very.. odd question but does anyone know where I can
| find the video? I'm curious about the details
| Jaygles wrote:
| I just had to go through a lot of hoops to switch from a physical
| sim to a new esim on a new phone. My brother had a sim swap
| attack occur a couple of weeks ago in an attempt we think to get
| to the small bit of crypto he had. Apparently a sim swap attack
| was attempted and thwarted again earlier this year but they did
| not give me any details to me about the attack.
|
| I'm glad our account has this extra protection on it but I'm
| still going to be going through and removing SMS 2FA on anything
| remotely important.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| trigger warning, there's a very violent photo near the top of the
| page
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| What does this mean "trigger warning?" Seems to have some
| political backlash but I never understood the original
| reference.
| orangepurple wrote:
| notch656a wrote:
| It's been removed from the page so here's the link:
|
| https://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/fores...
|
| Dude on the right has his finger on the trigger of that
| polymer80 glock clone, so hopefully it isn't loaded...
| random314 wrote:
| > "No1 cared about that nigga anyway, he snaked targs [targets]
| and flaunted it everywhere," Gus said of Foreshadow. "I've been
| fucked over so many times I've lost millions. I am just a guy
| trying to make more money."
|
| No matter how evil a person is, they always see themselves as the
| victim. Every person I have ever met sees themselves as a victim.
| I am pretty sure Hitler saw himself as a victim as well.
|
| Here the kidnapper, thief and potential murderer sees himself as
| a victim because he couldn't steal as many millions of dollars as
| he wished he could. I shouldn't be surprised by this behavior,
| but it still makes you laugh.
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| Fucked around and found out.
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