SIM Swapping | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Five alleged members of the infamous Scattered Spider cybercrime crew have been indicted in the U.S. for targeting employees of companies across the country using social engineering techniques to harvest credentials and using them to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data and break into crypto accounts to steal digital assets worth millions of dollars. All of the accused parties have been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy, and one count of aggravated identity theft. They include - Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, 23, aka AD, of College Station, Texas Noah Michael Urban, 20, aka Sosa and Elijah, of Palm Coast, Florida Evans Onyeaka Osiebo, 20, of Dallas, Texas Joel Martin Evans, 25, aka joeleoli, of Jacksonville, North Carolina; and Tyler Robert Buchanan, 22, aka tylerb, of the U.K. While the name Scattered Spider  is not directly referenced in the indictment document, it has been described as "a loosely organized financi...

Attacks on your network are often meticulously planned operations launched by sophisticated threats. Sometimes your technical fortifications provide a formidable challenge, and the attack requires assistance from the inside to succeed. For example, in 2022, the FBI issued a warning 1 that SIM swap attacks are growing: gain control of the phone and earn a gateway to email, bank accounts, stocks, bitcoins, identity credentials, and passwords. This past spring, current and former T-Mobile and Verizon employees reported receiving unsolicited text messages asking if they would be interested in some side cash 2 in exchange for intentionally enabling the " SIM jacking." These headline-grabbing stories about the malicious insider are certainly real, but many external attacks stem from a much less conspicuous source: the accidental insider . These are career employees, contractors, partners, or even temporary seasonal workers who, through negligence or lack of awareness, enable the exploit...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Law enforcement authorities have allegedly arrested a key member of the notorious cybercrime group called Scattered Spider. The individual, a 22-year-old man from the United Kingdom, was arrested this week in the Spanish city of Palma de Mallorca as he attempted to board a flight to Italy. The move is part of a joint effort between the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Spanish National Police that began last May. News of the arrest was first reported by Murcia Today on June 14, 2024, with vx-underground subsequently revealing that the apprehended party is "associated with several other high profile ransomware attacks performed by Scattered Spider." The malware research group further said the individual was a SIM swapper who operated under the alias "Tyler." SIM swapping attacks work by calling the telecom provider to transfer a target's phone number to a SIM under their control with the goal of intercepting their messages, including one-...

When it comes to access security, one recommendation stands out above the rest: multi-factor authentication (MFA). With passwords alone being simple work for hackers, MFA provides an essential layer of protection against breaches. However, it's important to remember that MFA isn't foolproof. It can be bypassed, and it often is.  If a password is compromised, there are several options available to hackers looking to circumvent the added protection of MFA. We'll explore four social engineering tactics hackers successfully use to breach MFA and emphasize the importance of having a strong password as part of a layered defense.  1. Adversary-in-the-middle (AITM) attacks AITM attacks involve deceiving users into believing they're logging into a genuine network, application, or website. But really, they're giving up their information to a fraudulent lookalike. This lets hackers intercept passwords and manipulate security measures, including MFA prompts. For instance, a spear-phis...

A 42-year-old Belarusian and Cypriot national with alleged connections to the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e is facing charges related to money laundering and operating an unlicensed money services business. Aliaksandr Klimenka , who was arrested in Latvia on December 21, 2023, was extradited to the U.S. and is currently being held in custody. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. BTC-e, which had been operating since 2011, was seized by law enforcement authorities in late July 2017 following the arrest of another key member  Alexander Vinnik , in Greece. The exchange is alleged to have received deposits valued at over $4 billion, with Vinnik laundering funds received from the hack of another digital exchange, Mt. Gox, through various online exchanges, including BTC-e. Court documents  allege  that the exchange was a "significant cybercrime and online money laundering entity," allowing its users to trade in bitcoin with high level...

Two British teens part of the LAPSUS$ cyber crime and extortion gang have been sentenced for their roles in orchestrating a string of high-profile attacks against a number of companies. Arion Kurtaj, an 18-year-old from Oxford, has been sentenced to an indefinite hospital order due to his intent to get back to cybercrime "as soon as possible," BBC  reported . Kurtaj, who is autistic, was deemed unfit to stand trial. Another LAPSUS$ member, a 17-year-old unnamed minor, was sentenced to an 18-month-long Youth Rehabilitation Order, including a three-month intensive supervision and surveillance requirement. He was found guilty of two counts of fraud, two Computer Misuse Act offenses, and one count of blackmail. Both defendants  were initially arrested in January 2022, and then released under investigation. They were re-arrested in March 2022. While Kurtaj was later granted bail, he continued to attack various companies until he was arrested again in September. The attack sp...

The prolific threat actor known as  Scattered Spider  has been observed impersonating newly hired employees in targeted firms as a ploy to blend into normal on-hire processes and takeover accounts and breach organizations across the world. Microsoft, which disclosed the activities of the financially motivated hacking crew, described the adversary as "one of the most dangerous financial criminal groups," calling out its operational fluidity and its ability to incorporate SMS phishing, SIM swapping, and help desk fraud into its attack model. "Octo Tempest is a financially motivated collective of native English-speaking threat actors known for launching wide-ranging campaigns that prominently feature adversary-in-the-middle ( AiTM ) techniques, social engineering, and SIM swapping capabilities," the company  said . It's worth noting that the activity represented by  Octo Tempest  is tracked by other cybersecurity companies under various monikers, including 0kta...

Spanish law enforcement officials have  announced  the arrest of 34 members of a criminal group that carried out various online scams, netting the gang about €3 million ($3.2 million) in illegal profits. Authorities conducted searches across 16 locations Madrid, Malaga, Huelva, Alicante, and Murcia, seizing two simulated firearms, a katana sword, a baseball bat, €80,000 in cash, four high-end vehicles, and computer and electronic material worth thousands of euros. The operation also uncovered a database with cross-referenced information on four million people that was collated after infiltrating databases belonging to financial and credit institutions. The scams, which were conducted via email, SMS, and phone calls, entailed the threat actors masquerading as banks and electricity supply companies to defraud victims, in some cases even perpetrating  "son in distress" calls  and manipulating delivery notes from technology firms. In one instance, the miscreants re...

Risk and financial advisory solutions provider Kroll on Friday disclosed that one of its employees fell victim to a "highly sophisticated" SIM swapping attack. The incident, which took place on August 19, 2023, targeted the employee's T-Mobile account, the company said. "Specifically, T-Mobile, without any authority from or contact with Kroll or its employee, transferred that employee's phone number to the threat actor's phone at their request," it  said  in an advisory. This enabled the unidentified actor to gain access to certain files containing personal information of bankruptcy claimants in the matters of BlockFi , FTX , and Genesis. SIM swapping (aka SIM splitting or simjacking), while generally a benign process, could be exploited by threat actors to fraudulently activate a SIM card under their control with a victim's phone number. This makes it possible to intercept SMS messages and voice calls and receive MFA-related messages that cont...

A U.K. citizen who took part in the massive July 2020 hack of Twitter has been sentenced to five years in prison in the U.S. Joseph James O'Connor (aka PlugwalkJoe), 24, was awarded the sentence on Friday in the Southern District of New York, a little over a month  after  he  pleaded guilty  to the criminal schemes. He was  arrested  in Spain in July 2021. The infamous Twitter breach allowed the defendant and his co-conspirators to obtain unauthorized access to backend tools used by Twitter, abusing them to hijack 130 popular accounts to perpetrate a crypto scam that netted them about $120,000 in illegal profits. "In other instances, the co-conspirators sold access to Twitter accounts to others," the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  said . "O'Connor communicated with others regarding purchasing unauthorized access to a variety of Twitter accounts, including accounts associated with public figures around the world." The defendant has also been acc...

A financially motivated cyber actor has been observed abusing Microsoft Azure  Serial Console  on virtual machines (VMs) to install third-party remote management tools within compromised environments. Google-owned Mandiant attributed the activity to a threat group it tracks under the name  UNC3944 , which is also known as Roasted 0ktapus and Scattered Spider. "This method of attack was unique in that it avoided many of the traditional detection methods employed within Azure and provided the attacker with full administrative access to the VM," the threat intelligence firm  said . The emerging adversary, which first came to light late last year, is known to  leverage SIM swapping attacks  to breach telecommunications and business process outsourcing (BPO) companies since at least May 2022. Subsequently, Mandiant also  found  UNC3944 utilizing a loader named STONESTOP to install a malicious signed driver dubbed POORTRY that's designed to termin...

A U.K. national has pleaded guilty in the U.S. in connection with the July 2020 Twitter attack affecting numerous high-profile accounts and defrauding other users of the platform. Joseph James O'Connor, who also went by the online alias PlugwalkJoe , admitted to "his role in cyberstalking and multiple schemes that involve computer hacking, including the July 2020 hack of Twitter," the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. The 23-year-old individual was extradited from Spain on April 26 after the Spanish National Court, in February,  approved  the DoJ request to hand over O'Connor to face 14 criminal charges in the U.S. The  massive hack , which took place on July 15, 2020, involved O'Connor and his co-conspirators seizing control of 130 Twitter accounts, including those belonging to Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk, to perpetrate a cryptocurrency scam that netted them $120,000 in a few hours. The attack was made possible by using social engineering te...

A persistent intrusion campaign has set its eyes on telecommunications and business process outsourcing (BPO) companies at lease since June 2022. "The end objective of this campaign appears to be to gain access to mobile carrier networks and, as evidenced in two investigations, perform  SIM swapping  activity," CrowdStrike researcher Tim Parisi  said  in an analysis published last week. The financially motivated attacks have been attributed by the cybersecurity company to an actor tracked as Scattered Spider. Initial access to the target environment is said to be undertaken through a variety of methods ranging from social engineering using phone calls and messages sent via Telegram to impersonate IT personnel. This technique is leveraged to direct victims to a credential harvesting site or trick them into installing commercial remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools like Zoho Assist and Getscreen.me. Should the target accounts be secured by two-factor aut...

Telecom company T-Mobile on Friday confirmed that it was the victim of a security breach in March after the LAPSUS$ mercenary gang managed to gain access to its networks. The acknowledgment came after investigative journalist Brian Krebs  shared  internal chats belonging to the core members of the group indicating that LAPSUS$ breached the company several times in March  prior to the arrest  of its seven members. T-Mobile, in a statement, said that the incident occurred "several weeks ago, with the "bad actor" using stolen credentials to access internal systems. "The systems accessed contained no customer or government information or other similarly sensitive information, and we have no evidence that the intruder was able to obtain anything of value," it added. The VPN credentials for initial access are said to have been obtained from illicit websites like Russian Market with the goal of gaining control of T-Mobile employee accounts, ultimately allowing ...

Spain's National Police Agency, the Policía Nacional, said last week it dismantled an unnamed cybercriminal organization and arrested eight individuals in connection with a series of SIM swapping attacks that were carried out with the goal of financial fraud. The suspects of the crime ring masqueraded as trustworthy representatives of banks and other organizations and used traditional phishing and smishing techniques to obtain personal information and bank data of victims before draining money from their accounts. "They usurped the identity of their victims through the falsification of official documents and tricked employees of telephone stores into getting the duplicate of SIM cards, cards where they received security confirmation messages from banks that allowed them to empty their victims' accounts," the authorities  said . Seven of the arrests were made in Barcelona and one in Seville. As many as 12 bank accounts were frozen as part of the illicit operation....

A sixth member associated with an international hacking group known as  The Community  has been sentenced in connection with a multimillion-dollar SIM swapping conspiracy, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. Garrett Endicott, 22, from the U.S. state of Missouri, who pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft following an indictment in 2019, was  sentenced  to 10 months in prison and ordered to pay an amount totaling $121,549.37 in restitution. SIM swapping , also called SIM hijacking, refers to an identity theft scheme wherein malicious parties persuade phone carriers into porting their victims' cell services to SIM cards under their control, often facilitated by bribing an employee of a mobile phone provider or by contacting the service provider's customer support by posing as the victim and requesting that the phone number be swapped to a SIM card operated by the group. The goal is to leverage the phone numbers as a gateway to...

Ten people belonging to a criminal network have been arrested in connection with a series of SIM-swapping attacks that resulted in the theft of more than $100 million by hijacking the mobile phone accounts of high-profile individuals in the U.S. The Europol-coordinated  year-long investigation  was jointly conducted by law enforcement authorities from the U.K., U.S., Belgium, Malta, and Canada. "The attacks orchestrated by this criminal gang targeted thousands of victims throughout 2020, including famous internet influencers, sport stars, musicians and their families," Europol  said  in a statement. "The criminals are believed to have stolen from them over $100 million in cryptocurrencies after illegally gaining access to their phones." The eight suspects, aged 18 to 26, are said to be part of a larger ring, two members of which were nabbed previously in Malta and Belgium. The latest arrests were made in England and Scotland. The sweep comes almost a year afte...

Europol, along with the Spanish and the Romanian national police, has arrested 26 individuals in connection with the theft of over €3.5 million ($3.9 million) by hijacking people's phone numbers via SIM swapping attacks. The law enforcement agencies arrested 12 and 14 people in Spain and Romania, respectively, as part of a joint operation against two different groups of SIM swappers, Europol said . The development comes as SIM swapping attacks are emerging as one of the biggest threats to telecom operators and mobile users alike. The increasingly popular and damaging hack is a clever social engineering trick used by cybercriminals to persuade phone carriers into transferring their victims' cell services to a SIM card under their control. The SIM swap then grants attackers access to incoming phone calls, text messages, and one-time verification codes (or one-time passwords ) that various websites send via SMS messages as part of the two-factor authentication (2FA) proc...