#PREVENT SIM CARD HACK PLUS#

After going through the system and getting hold of the very helpful agent, I said I was Paul and gave his corresponding phone number to which I then had to pass security. I got lucky with the first company, as it was the one he was with. Most people in the UK use one of a small number of telecommunication companies, so I decided to start with one. RELATED READING: 5 major US wireless carriers vulnerable to SIM swapping attacks It didnвЂ™t take a genius to work out the exact days on which they each were born, so I noted these dates of interest and moved on to the next part of the experiment. I soon found the birth dates both for Paul and his son вЂ“ I only needed to look at several public posts he made across his social networks before, during and after their birthdays. I was keen to locate dates and numbers that meant something to him, so I dug around for birthdays and anything else that looked of chronological interest. It didnвЂ™t take long to find out a tremendous amount of information about him, especially through his public Instagram feed and wide-open Facebook posts.

Although some bad actors could, in fact, request a connection with their targets, I thought this experiment would be best if I kept my distance, as I do in fact know a lot about him.

#PREVENT SIM CARD HACK PLUS#

Much like for many other people, his contact details could be found on his website, plus with some good old-fashioned internet research (or open-source intelligence, aka OSINT) I was able to find a whole lot more.ДЄcting like a true threat actor, I recorded any information about him that I could find online, as a third party would, without submitting any friend requests or follows on his social media. Paul owns a real estate agency that sells luxury properties in one of the most expensive locations in the UK. How SIM swapping worksДЄll I needed to conduct the test was PaulвЂ™s real name and phone number. He was happy to oblige and even thought it would be fun to be part of an experiment. I asked him recently if I could attempt to ethically hack him for the greater good and use anything that came from it in the name of cyber-awareness and helping protect people from future attacks. I have known my friend вЂ“ a letвЂ™s call him Paul вЂ“ since school and weвЂ™ve been close friends ever since. It was a very valuable lesson for the colleague-turned-victim. In fact, I ran a similar experiment last year when I showed how easy it is to hack anyoneвЂ™s WhatsApp account by knowing their phone number. A real-life story is always better when helping people to be more cyber-aware. I will come back to what you can do to mitigate the risks later, but first I want to tell you how I tested a SIM swap attack just so I could generate a talk and help people understand the risks. So why donвЂ™t we just implement a few precautionary methods to reduce this risk? But the truth is that we are part of a huge numbers game for many malicious actors and they will continue to target the low-hanging fruit. Indeed, people often tell me that they will never get hacked in any way and they actually even wonder why anyone would even target them. We hear of SIM swapping вЂ“ also known as SIM hijacking and SIM swap scams вЂ“ all the time, and yet many people think it canвЂ™t ever happen to them.

Just how easy is it to conduct a SIM swap attack and what can the attacker do once they have taken control of your phone number? In short, itвЂ™s worryingly easy and the criminals can do a lot once they have the keys to the kingdom. HereвЂ™s how easily your phone number could be stolen, why a successful SIM swap scam is only the beginning of your problems, and how you can avoid becoming a victim of the attack

Prevent sim card hack