SIM Swapping | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Twitter today finally decided to temporarily disable a feature, called ' Tweeting via SMS ,' after it was abused by a hacking group to compromise Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week and sent a series of racist and offensive tweets to Dorsey's followers. Dorsey's Twitter account was compromised last week when a hacker group calling itself "Chuckling Squad" replicated a mobile phone number associated with the CEO account and abused this particular feature to post racist, offensive messages and bomb threats from it via SMS. Replicating a mobile phone number associated with someone else is a technique known as " SIM swapping ," where attackers social engineer a victim's mobile phone provider and trick the telecom company to transfer target's phone number to their own SIM card. Once they social engineered an AT&T employee and gained access to Dorsey's phone number, the Chuckling Squad hackers used the 'Tweeting via SMS' feat

The U.S. Department of Justice today announced charges against nine individuals, 6 of which are members of a hacking group called "The Community" and other 3 are former employees of mobile phone providers who allegedly helped them steal roughly $2.5 million worth of the cryptocurrency using a method known as "SIM Swapping." According to the 15-count indictment unsealed today, five Americans and an Irishman related to The Community hacking group are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as well as wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Another three Americans, who reportedly are the former employees of mobile phone providers, are charged in a criminal complaint with the wire fraud. SIM Swapping , or SIM Hijacking , is a type of identity theft that typically involves fraudulently porting of the same number to a new SIM card belonging to the attacker. In SIM swapping, attackers social engineer a victim's mobile phone provider by convincing it

Account takeover attacks have emerged as one of the most persistent and damaging threats to cloud-based SaaS environments. Yet despite significant investments in traditional security measures, many organizations continue to struggle with preventing these attacks. A new report, " Why Account Takeover Attacks Still Succeed, and Why the Browser is Your Secret Weapon in Stopping Them " argues that the browser is the primary battleground where account takeover attacks unfold and, thus, where they should be neutralized. The report also provides effective guidance for mitigating the account takeover risk.  Below are some of the key points raised in the report: The Role of the Browser in Account Takeovers According to the report, the SaaS kill chain takes advantage of the fundamental components that are contained within the browser. For account takeover, these include: Executed Web Pages - Attackers can create phishing login pages or use MiTM over legitimate web pages to harve

A 20-year-old college student who stole cryptocurrency worth more than $5 million by hijacking victims' phone numbers has pleaded guilty and accepted a sentence of 10 years in prison. Ortiz was arrested last year on charges of siphoning millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from around 40 victims using a method commonly known as " SIM swapping ," which typically involves fraudulently porting of the same number to a new SIM card belonging to the attacker. In SIM swapping, attackers social engineer a victim's mobile phone provider by making a phony call posing as their target and claiming that their SIM card has been lost and that they would like to request a SIM swap. The attackers attempt to convince the target's telecommunications company that they are the actual owner of the phone number they want to swap by providing required personal information on the target, like their SSNs and addresses, eventually tricking the telecoms to port the target's pho