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A Crypto investor Michael Terpin lost roughly 1,5oo bitcoins on January 7, 2018, after falling victim to a SIM swap attack, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The bitcoin stake was worth $24 million that day, roughly three weeks after the asset hit its record high price.
The incredibly precise hack involves thieves taking control of a phone number and using it to access email accounts, bank reserves, and even crypto wallets.
Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
One crypto investor lost bitcoin worth as much as $24 million after falling victim to a new kind of hack known as SIM swapping, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Michael Terpin was hit by the attack on January 7, 2018, days after bitcoin reached its record high price. Thieves stole roughly 1,500 bitcoins by taking control of his phone number and using Google's "Forgot password?" feature to gain access to his email. With possession of the two personal accounts, the thieves hacked Terpin's crypto wallet, stole the digital assets and quickly sold them, according to WSJ.
Bitcoin traded between $16,969 and $15,790 per coin on January 7, 2018. The digital coin now trades at roughly $8,700.

Source:
Wall Street journal

This sucks, I see stories like this all the time on here. He really shouldn’t have been keeping that amount of crypto online though. It should be on paper wallets or a hardware wallet. Sad for him :(

Yes of course leaving such a huge amount of Bitcoin on the net is totally insane. I hope he and any other whale investors pay attention, because scammers will come back again when bullmarket start to find new victims

They dont only attack on a bullmarket but even to this time yet these hackers do knows bitcoins value potential on upcoming years.
We've seen exchange hacks as of this years which proves out that these criminals are just finding the right timing to stole precious bitcoin.
Keeping coins on a web-wallet isnt really ideal as i have read it do involves access of email which means he might stored up some keys or simply
able to access his exchange accounts?

With such amount it shouldn't be on the exchange or online wallet where anyone with the knowledge of howtos can access anyone's email. Some websites can even be accessed by the mobile's phone number, they don't need to know your email address but just the mobile number. If $1M is worth the killing, for $24M I'd probably bomb the suspect to pieces.

Lol, poor bastard :(

I guess it s partially his fault for storing his bitcoins online instead of using a safe wallet. Hopefully, his story will become a lesson for some doing the same mistake ;)

January 2018? Talk about ancient...

SIM attacks are nothing new, it is but another attack vector. People should act smarter, but its quite the opposite. One tells them to stop using windows our put wallets in smartphones, and yet they keep doing it, until they get hit and blame it on Bitcoin, when in reality it was their attitude that prompted it.

Google dependency also didn't help, maybe if he just used another email provider...

And.. this is why you should keep your holdings in a hardware or paper wallet. Or even a software wallet if the wallet is not connected to the internet. By SIM swapping it means that someone changed the sim card in his phone? Then it is the investor's fault as well especially if he knew he has such a big stake in cryptocurrency. In the era of technology, extra cybersecurity measures are a must and we should all at least get a basic education on how to protect ourselves against cyber threats.

Bitcoin and its characteristic that allows each single user to become their own bank switches the responsibility of protecting their coins to each one of us and it is important to not take that responsibility lightly, it is very important that we do everything that we can to protect our coins even if the amount of money is small to us, since there are many people out there that would like to get possession of our coins, it is incredible that all of this could have been prevented by just buying a hardware wallet and store his holdings there.

The idea of holding 24 million dollars in an online wallet is so crazy.

Easy come, easy goes...
Old news, but nice share.

This is somehow old news woth regards to Michael Terpin. He recently filed a lawsuit against AT&T for breach of contract and he will try to win his $24 million from them, not to mention he also have 50 other individuals who have been victimized by sim swapping because of the process AT&T gives for people trying to access someone else's sim card. I personally think Terpin would win specially of has 50 other individuals who are the sam victims as him.

Have came accross this news before. Such a huge amount of cryptocurrency should not be kept online. This is worth sharing to spread awareness for those who are keeping their crypto online. It is never advisable to leave your money online. Secure your funds, keep it in a hardware wallet.

Really it is a sad story it going to be lessons for all who have weak hands in secure measures. So we have to store our coins in most secure wallet as may people are trusted that with our secure identity. But nowadays the hackers be come too smart and they can find new tricks and ideas to hack people's information so we can not share our information any free paying online website or scam surveys.

We see all these stories all the time and still people are not learning is the biggest problem, storing your coins in your mobile or online wallet is the dumbest thing you can do and if he is holding that much coins what stops him from storing it safely, hardware wallet is not that expensive and there is no point in investing millions if you do not know how to keep the coins safe.

Wow! That is a big hack attack and the target was well known otherwise they wouldn't know that he had 1.5k$ BTC which is crazy and foolish in the same time to not have extra security for such a big amount.

Imagine holding 24mil$ in a simple wallet thinking that you're not a target for those hackers who are waiting for people just like him in order to make their moves. I hope this is a lesson for those who are having big amounts of Bitcoin and not only , to improve the security of their wallets or simply move towards cold and hardware wallets.

That's very unfortunate. We all work hard here investing on crypto making sure that we can secure a bountiful life in the future but by just one little mistake, we can end up loosing it all in a snap. Let us take this unfortunate event as a lesson learned for us to be more careful and more wise with our investment. Always avoid putting too large money on our wallet and always make sure that it is well secured to avoid getting attacked. As soon as you put up a large amount of bitcoin on your wallet, you are already putting yourself at great risk.

But people never understand the actual scams and we people need to choose the right project invest as well as to earn the money or tokens also guys. Most of the people missing that and worrying after they got scammed.

Apart from that some bug sites also there like they were scamming us with phishing links.

Which case the OP is referring to?

Crypto Investor Awarded Over $75 Million in SIM-Swapping Hack Case (https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-investor-awarded-over-75-million-in-sim-swapping-hack-case)?

AT&T Fails to Win Dismissal in $24 Million Crypto SIM-Swap Lawsuit (https://www.coindesk.com/att-fails-to-win-dismissal-in-24-million-crypto-sim-swap-lawsuit)

For the record though, Michael Terpin was hacked twice already, he won the first case and awarded $75 million.

I'm not saying that it's his fault, but he should should learn his lessons from the first attack and keep his BTC in a safe place.

Yes, this was the news last year.

Bitcoin Investor Sues AT&T After Losing $23 Million In SIM Swap Hack (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pawwkz/bitcoin-investor-sues-att-23-million-sim-swap-hack)

FTFY, bro.
I don't know why he didn't even think of storing that to a safer storage during that time.

Oh shit, that's scary and this guy must be devastated.

Op, I'm glad you posted this else I would never have learned about this kind of hack, even if it was old news.  I still hadn't heard about it.  It wouldn't matter for the bitcoin I own, since I don't keep it on an exchange or a web wallet or anything, but the SIM swapping thing could be used for anything else I suppose. 

It does make me wonder how he got targeted in the first place, since someone must have known he owned all that bitcoin, no?  I can't imagine getting hacked for that much.  I'm not sure how I'd recover, if at all.  The guy who got hacked is probably wealthy (hopefully) and I'm hoping he bounced back from this eventually.  Is there no followup story?

In this crypto space we find ourselves, we are in charge of our personal safety in terms of online amounts and online crypto wallets. The moment you make a little mistake, your account or wallet will be drained off the crypto coins in it. It is quite sad that Michael Terpin lost about 1500 Bitcoins. But why will you keep such an amount of Bitcoins in one single wallet which is an online wallet? This will be a lesson he will never forget as long as he is alive.  People need to protect and keep their wallets safe and secured.

It will not fully secure your holdings if you just put it on paper. If I am not mistaken, you shouldn't also put your funds in paper especially in a QR code. What suits better if you hold huge amount that is quite big enough for hackers to hack, you should store it in cold wallets. Wherein, your funds will be fully secured and transactions from it will not be possible without you plugging it to your computer.

One of my suggestion is for you to buy a ledger nano or trezor in their own websites.

I don't think sim swapping is a huge issue nowadays, a lot of companies where I live have added their precautions and policies when it comes to getting a second sim with a number, which usually requires the old number to be verified, or their ID to be verified.

It's more an article showcasing how careless some people are. With bank accounts it's fair, people should probably make sure transactions over 10,000 require a lot more ID, and crypto definitely needs to be stored on a hardware/cold wallet that can't be affected by the internet/these sorta attacks.

SIM cards are really not an adequate measure of protections. Governments have intentionally left several entry points and in some instances, have even cooperated with telcos to let communication mediums unencrypted and unsecured. Phone calls and SMS is subject to man in the middle and de-cryption attacks by anyone. Not even social engineering would be required with your provided if someone is willing to invest some 1000s of $ into ordering a machine from china. If that's put in range of your phone then it could receive your SMS before you by interfering with signals, and also text with your caller ID. Secret services are already using these techniques without a warrant.

I beg to disagree, Sim swapping is very prevalent, [BEWARE] Sim Port Attack (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5146701.0).


Yeah, that's the big question, how can a guy with tons of crypto's not storing it a hardware wallet, still baffles me. I do hope that he learn his lesson here, it's not the first time that it happen to him so it's really hard to understand how still he can be careless.

Is it possible that someone he knew that he owned 1,500 bitcoins do that ? I mean how did the sim swap happened? Losing $24 million is too huge and kinda depressing. If it's way back 201i, I believe therr are already hard wallets where you can store your bitcoin instead of storing it online.

And doesn't he set up 2fa or did not think about doubling the security? Emails and Passwords can easily be traced and changed. Hope he recovered from that bad experience.

If you have, or rather had, that many coins that either means you've been around forever or you had a shit ton to throw at it.

Both scenarios mean you should know considerably better than to keep that door open for anyone with the will and skill to walk through it. Sim swapping is well known enough.

It's still a huge thing today especially if there's a huge amount of fund that has been robbed from the past.

I guess he means that he's now keeping the private key written on a paper which is okay. And the question should be what's the wallet he's using right now. It could be any of those wallets that you have mentioned and he just wrote the PK on a sheet of paper.

This is the point, it is from the user's side and not the system. It's his careless that leads to the loss of his crypto assets. This is a lesson and a piece of advice to all that as possible do not store your crypto assets on an exchange, or online wallet. Buy a hardware wallet as possible to be sure that your crypto assets are safe.

The SIM swapping attack is one well-organized attack by thieves. It's quite hard to counter, but you could tighten up security by limiting the information you disclose on the internet, and track all your publicly open data such as those sensitive and basic information like addresses and phone numbers. The mobile network provider also has some responsibility over the theft since they should not allow sim swap whenever the person himself is not in their office, conducting the actual process.

it has become a natural thing that many people lose because they are careless because they may not have very much experience so that they suffer losses like that, because indeed wherever they all have risks even in cryptocurrency will have a higher risk because no one can guarantee cryptocurrency security is included in the wallet or place of exchange when making transactions.

I think this is his own fault because he made his personal crypto wallet via email and did not use two authentication in his wallet. This is fatal, Hopefully in the future he can better protect his crypton wallet, what we need to know now is that we have to use an offline wallet or a hardware wallet that is not easily accessed by hackers because with more sophisticated technology today, hackers are also increasingly smart breaking into several programs.

There's chances that this attack also being well organized and some employees are connected doing this inside job. It's really important to
tighten your securities especially if the stake amount is huge like that. If you can manage to work with adding additional securities a third
party service that you fully trust then hackers will be having a hard time penetrating your account.

that's what  they get for not educating themselves.
when you enter some new world the first thing you need to do is to learn how things work and when there is money involved one of the first things is to learn how to secure your funds. in case of bitcoin cold storage is one of the first advises you see as a beginner but those who ignore it are always going to regret it soon when they lose their precious bitcoins.

now you that are reading this, if you haven't set up a cold storage of your own go do it right now: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Cold_storage

This space never gets cleaned from all these series of hack and security breach. i really want to know how this sim hack was possible without them having a direct access with his phone. Anyway i am sorry for his laws and i hope the criminals leave a loose end in their plot so that they can be apprehended. This is the original article that the OP referenced from...You all can go and have a look over here.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/he-thought-his-phone-was-secure-then-he-lost-24-million-to-hackers-11573221600

This totally a sad story, I feel sorry for the man in subject and I wonder how he will feel and what he will think of crypto curreny. But when I read the story over again I believe the seems not to understand how to secure is wallet and he's not using a hardware wallet either to save such huge coon cause there's no way a hacker will have access to is hard wallet through is phone and emails.
@OP always the lnk to the news you post next time.

It is quite surprising if it can happen to such a large extent that is lost, I also cannot think that it can be easily taken. The question is, is this news possible justified? it's a pity to have to experience something like this because of the fantastic value.

I am afraid of such type of news, I know this Sim swap is not a new thing in this platform, but it's very unfortunate that type of massive loss, there should be another recovery system added and more security option should be added here, Also we have to be very careful about this issue because it's gone if we loss once, so we don't have any single chance to get recovered it, This is the alarming side of this platform, but it can be protected very easily because if we are serious then our saving also kept being secure, so don't be panicked and don't be foolish towards this security. hope that person has come back strongly though it's a tough job for anyone.

When investing with crypto you have two chance, maybe get profit with your investing or getting lost, we can't prediction what happen at the future with our investing although invest with bitcoin and top altcoin, many chance can be happen like bitcoin price on 2017 above $15K and now drop lower price, when you invest with bitcoin you have ready cut lost for less your lost money when price down.

No, it's not, prevalent mean that is a common thing and it happens frequently yet we have a dozen cases out of millions.
And nobody is even trying to ask themselves how many times have the thieves failed to get the data and how many times the operator refused to do so.

Look at my previous experience while trying to replace my sim:


Remember I was there holding the ID in one hand and the actual phone with the active number in the other

But now, one more motive to be listed here:
Why say "NO" to Web wallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5199734.0)

To be honest and speaking like an ordinary man who is not really very technical, this story quietly illustrates why there are people who are afraid to deal with cryptocurrency because we can not deny that there is a big risk of being a victim of hacking. Hackers are now getting advanced and can always be studying new ways and means to get into people's fat wallets and get themselves rich in the process. I know this is never the fault of Bitcoin but in the face of this big risk a person may think twice of investing with digital assets. And the sadder part is that there is nothing we can do for now once the control is already on the hackers' side, we can only watch how the assets are transferred from one wallet to another and even trace them to different exchanges but to stop the whole thing is beyond anybody's power.

This is very personal problem, in the first place why he didn't secure his credentials and didn't notice the changes that were made. Even if they were able to gain access to the email, I wonder how they were able to get the keys of his crypto wallet.

In the first place, I didn't think that it is a genuine happening but if in case it is really genuine. One thing that I can say only, he should have put his bitcoins in a safe wallet where the private keys is secure or he should have put it in cold wallet.
 

Yes this huge amount of investment should be kept in a safe place .
The question is why didn't the investor make sure that his investment is safe?
Hardware wallet is only a cheap investment to secure all of his crypto so why didn't he bought it if he would keep a huge amount of crypto?

That's really sad to hear that there's a lot of investors who are in depth loss and not only a thousand dollar but a million dollar which cannot earn that easily especially for normal person like us, if hat will happen to me I really don't know what will happen to me, maybe I will be in deep depression or will just let it go if I am billionaire. Anyway, we should always let this be a lesson to be learned from all of us.

It is a big example that we should be careful of our decision because this world is hard then we ever think. We are making money digitally meaning we cannot handle our own money physically. So every step must be studied because one single mistake, all of your money will be loose. We should study every project we want to invest in because not every word they say is true, it is normal for them to say promising words so you should not trust that, you should find out on your own. You can see the reviews of other investors if that particular project is worth investing in.

I don't think that Hardware Wallet is secured since it can be hack by a spyware or worms and it depends if the antivirus is updated or can detect it since some of the new wares or virus are updated now.

And i think that paper wallet is much secured since you can access it  by accessing using the private key. Trezor hardware wallet can be secured if there is an updated antivirus or malware app.

This is very sad to lose such amount of bitcoin. But why will this person keep such amount of bitcoin in  a single wallet?  This will help him not to make such mistake again and become more vigilant on how he keeps his wallet safe from such attacks in the future. The internet is not as friendly as many of you think. You need to protect yourself while surfing the internet to avoid being attacked.

Erm, track down whoever told you that and twist their nipples until they pass out.

You can plug your hardware wallet into the most disgustingly virus ridden machine and you'll be absolutely fine. That's the whole point of them. Nothing on the internet can access the private keys.

There are plenty of attempts to trick you into entering its seed into websites but you'd have to be exceptionally dim to fall for it.

I don't know how that person will endure the pain of rotating nipples  ;D ;D
however, I'm still quite confused about how hardwallet will be hacked, whereas it has a private key that only you know. if the person put it on the hardwallet, I think the assets they have are still safe until now. but, it has already passed, I am sure that the person learned from this. however, 1500 bitcoin is too valuable to forget  :'(

This is one of down side of CC that stolen coins can never be recovered.

He probably was the more money less brain kind of guy. He had so much money, money most of us will never have, even if Bitcoin hits 1 million per coin because by that time we'll sell most of it and only have a million or two in BTC left, and lost it all because he didn't know anything about security.
People have just 10k USD and keep it divided between multiple wallets and to have millions and not buy a hardware wallet or at least a decent offline laptop is plain stupid. You can buy super secure machines like purism librem for 1,5k USD or a hardware wallet for as little as $100.

Bottomline, still on you how you will be a target of those phishing attacks. You should not be gullible in entering your private keys to just anything that will pop up. He might have entered his keys unknowingly to some site he didn't know was a phishing site. But such amount is really heavy on pocket. I guess, he learned his lessons well by that traumatic experience.

I completely agree with you. Keeping such an amount of money and not securing yourself is a big nonsense. But the second side of the coin is to replace SIM cards. How can these substitutions be prevented? Indeed, there have been a lot of victims of fake SIM cards lately.

This is why we keep telling everyone not to store money online, especially big amount of bitcoin. This incident teach many people about the online wallet, its been almost 2 years and people can’t get over about this scam. If you are planning to invest big money then put extra effort on learning about cryptocurrency, don’t just depend to your secretary or to anyone, you really have to secure yourself to prevent incidents like this.

This should be a lesson to all those who hold money on exchanges and in online wallets.
There were so many things ho could do to be safe and all of those things were so easy.

Buy a hardware wallet.
Divide money between wallets.
Keep some on exchanges so at least you'd have different emails and account names for each of them.
Not use gmail.

Millions of money yet can’t afford to buy a hard wallet is ridiculous, I’m sure that millionaire is not investing alone I mean someone should guy them on how to properly put the money online. He loss big amount of money whether he’s so rich or not, what we have to learn here is that we should not trust the wallet that we can’t control even if its a small money only.

Any link for source?
Who the hell holds 24m on a hot wallet?
How you sell that amount of bitcoins into a bank and the bank not freeze it? He couldn't not notice it missing on time since it pings you whenever a move is made by mails and app.

We aren't even sure if he really is a victim of a hacking or his funds has been really stolen, in the first place he would not become a victim if he just been responsible enough in handling his funds. There are different measures and procedures to keep your funds safe before investing in cryptocurrency. If the OP posted a link regarding the real situation, we might figure out if the victim has a deeper reason for how his funds got stolen. So far, the lesson that we might have regarding this is to become personally responsible for our funds, do not store it on exchanges as we aren't the one who really has the ownership of it.

It really sucks indeed but there is a mistake coming from the investor himself for not storing his Bitcoin well. With that huge amount of Bitcoin, he should stored it on a hardware wallet but probably it is stored on a web wallet or online wallet which is his mistake but it is a lesson from him too and for the other investors and holders here.

so, nothing is safe in our storage. especially on online storage, banks, crypto wallets, etc. I personally have experienced. EDO coins (EIDOO) at that time also had the highest price. around $ 20K, I don't know where the hacker came from. suddenly my assets were sent to another wallet. the only possible mistake is i didn't pay attention to the myether web link. so there is no safe system. hackers are always smarter at trapping us. so stay careful.

Indeed, it is the reason why some of us need to be cautious and attentive particularly these days that there are some people who will take advantage of you and deceive you. You have to understand that you can encounter different problems and challenges that is why you have to prepare yourself if you have already experienced it then learn from your mistake. Use it as a guide so you can easily avoid doing it again, it's speculative and you can't easily tell people's true intention that is the reason why you need to have enough understanding when it comes to these things because you will never know when it will happen to you.

When you got coin excatly from investing assets or come from bounty campaign never hold for long term, we can't prediction how future our altcoin price will grow up or down, I still save my altcoin until today have drop price if I sell last three years I got much profit, but keep holding until now price down and not listed on exchange market.

this is the risk when we enter the hacking crypto market. therefore we must always improve our security system. if you have a fairly large amount of bitcoin it should be stored in a hardware wallet I think it will be safer. rather than saved this exchange site. and do not change telephone numbers or SIMs are very dangerous. and choose internet networks that have strong security. Here are some tips that I did so that our wallets are not easily hacked by hackers.

I am almost not sure this is a true story or just manipulating the market, so if indeed he stores bitcoin on an exchange site as easily as a hacker accessing his wallet with only a SIM card and hacking that email, it looks like a joke

how do hackers know their email and cellphone number. lol  ;D
if indeed he publishes e-mails and telephone numbers it is clearly wrong

It's so sad to see such thing.
I already suffered a sim swap atack once and they stolen my money from the bank. Luck of me that the bank take the responsibility and gave me back the money
But in this case, there's nothing to do

That's a huge money and really a sad old story. And why does the investor didn't activate the Google's Two-Authenticator because its much safer and i think it cannot be hacked easily.

And that is the reason why its much better to use a paper wallet or hardware wallet and only access it if you need to make a transaction and only save the private key via QR code in an online cloud and save it encrypted.

Too sad to know that but if he is a wise and smart investor, he probably knows the risk of storing big amounts in an online wallet. For it will be bad to suffer such losses but have nothing to blame either. We've been hearing many claims and reports about this scenario and for us who haven't experienced yet, we better secure our funds first. Cause the more we are engaged in online services, the more we are vulnerable it hack attacks.

That is a sad story and it should really be a lesson to all of us too that we need to secure our cryptocurrencies very well and I think it was a mistake from this guy to have kept his currencies ion the wallet that he used. There has been an existence of hard wallet since that 2018 and I think that it was because he paid nonchalant attitude to it that made him to store such amount of coin in a wallet that is not very secured and also not taking control of his phone very well.

I believe this is one of the reasons why regulation is very necessary because if there was a regulation, I am sure that there is a way that the authority would have at least been able to trace the transaction to those scammers if they don’t use chip mixer to cover their tract anyway.

A sad story to tell to every person especially to newbies that it is not just fine to just take risk money, that you have the courage and that you have the fund. Let's not be too greedy of how much return we could have as there is nothing permanent in this world, there is nothing instant, quick money, it needs a lot of hardwork, patience as well as a lot of investigation and research before we trust someone or the project.

makes me wonder whats the best kind of storage for bitcoins in the long run.

I know how that feels. Maybe people in here after read that, will know and set 2fa and other securities in their google mail. At least people who can hold our number, or maybe when they have our password, with SIM swap, they can verify the login easily. But for google mail forgot password, i think for now it is not that simple because we asked for many question and although we can answer it, not means we can recover our account easily.

Some people may have a lot of money but they lack common sense, holding 24 million dollars on your phone in an online wallet is the equivalent of someone carrying all his cash with him and whatever jewelry he has as well, while in theory you are free to do whatever you want that person is asking for trouble, the correct thing to do is to only carry with you whatever money you may need and a little extra in case of an emergency but nothing more than that.

You don't even really need a hardware wallet. A wallet on their computer or mobile device used only for the purpose of storing coins would suffice. But with any amount above several thousand dollars, why not go get a hardware wallet too.

^ Definitely right, purchasing a little amount of his thousand dollars storing in hardware wallets is worth it. Probably the man who invested thousands of dollars in bitcoin does not have enough knowledge in Bitcoin. All probably all he knows is to invest only and wait until he gets profit. Carelessness will lead you from a victim of hacks and that was sad to story.

I remember in the beginning of 2018 a lot of US cryptocurrency holders learned the news that they had to pay huge amounts on taxes.
I also remember quite a few claiming they got hacked same time.
Perhaps I'm wrong but I doubt that anyone has millions of dollars active on his mobile phone.

The OP didnt nail the subject of its message, what is to be learnt from the article? How to prevent such loss for every post reader. It is up to 2 years of the loss and posted article, so its not as new. Any new member or investor must understand the need to know how to protect his portfolio before the need to make profit. It could be a risky misplaced of priority for any member that is entering the space at the moment, sadly everyone is vulnerable to this

Such a story will be repeated many more times. People will make many mistakes and just rash actions in cryptocurrency, which will lead to huge financial losses. Therefore, many will be disappointed and leave the cryptocurrency. Yes, unfortunately, cryptocurrency poses a huge risk to inept users.

Sometimes people accept more risk than they can take, make wrong decisions and overestimate their limits and possibilities, sometimes they are just reckless and don't know or don't care enough about safety and security. Such loss is bery expensive but also very efficient school if the lesson is learned.

This isn't a good experience for an investor, which I think there's a serious reason why it happened losing such big amount of money. Having $24 million as capital investment was emotionally a deep struggle, and suddenly lost in a one time shoot of investing. I guess it needs time to move on for this and treat this as a big lesson not to risk money without certain knowledge about what sector you're part with.

Misfortune for someone is a lesson for others, SIM swap attack is an old hacker trick, thus we can't really put too many funds in one place, even for a bank account.
Bitcoin is one of the best ways to transfer funds all over the world which becomes a good option for hackers to steal money and move it to another side of the globe, divide into some addresses, use the mixer or otc transaction to cover the track.

not sure if its the OPs guy, but didnt att just get sued and the guy won against losing bitcoin with a sim swap?
i know for a fact, my carrier, makes you go in a store and show id and have a code that the CS guy gives you to get a new sim.. its sort of a PITA, but i understand why.

The problem with SIM swapping is that any security measures they have in place is easily bypassed. There is no standardized method to verify the user, and the methods they do use can easily be spoofed, and that's why it's so easy to bypass with a simple social engineering trick.

Sometimes the telecom employee is just doing their job and ask the simple questions which are so easy to answer. It also happens with domain names and registrars.

They should have better security questions or completely random answers much like second or third passwords and maybe time based OTP 2FA codes, or backup codes. These things the user must set up, but then again, a lot of people don't bother.

While all of us are vulnerable to be hacked not all of us are of interest to them, a personal holding 24 millions has by far a lot more to fear than someone holding one dollar worth of bitcoin, it is important to recognize that fact and it is also important to take the right measures to prevent this to happen and one of the easiest ways is to use a hardware wallet and to keep those coins offline so no hacker can get access to them through the Internet.

Sad fact which the things you have said is the painful truth where most people doesnt really bother when it comes to enhancing security.
They would just only realize when they do lost up money bigtime.People never ever learn and too careless with their assets.I can even say
that being too paranoid on security matters is much more better rather than to those who doesnt even care.

I can't leave such quantity of bitcoin in a single bitcoin wallet that is not a secured hardware wallet. I won't be able to sleep over the worries. It's a life time terrible experience that shouldn't happen to anyone.

We feel bad for that person who have lost such huge amount in crypto but if you have stored your online which can be hacked by hackers by gaining aceess to your private keys then you need to learn lessons from the past.Store your private keys and coins in cold storage where hackers do not have access.So be safe in this technical world where everything connected to internet is at risk.

In my opinion lots of people lose their assets in such a silly to my mind way being too self-confident. Lots of people think that they will never face a problem of such kind, that their assets will never be stolen or their wallets or gadgets will never be attacked because noone knows about their amounts of coins, and that they are too inconspicuous for others. I think that it is better to keep your assets on cold wallets and remember that protection of your assets depends on yourself only.

Such a huge amount of bitcoin should not be stored in a single online wallet. We all know that everything in the internet can be hacked and can be easily stolen. Such a pity to this man. I hope this doesn't happen to him again or to anyone else.

And I hope karma hits them with a great bang!

I would choose a safer hardware wallet if I have assets of up to thousands of BTC like that, I'm sorry. That hurts so much, assets disappear when prices reach the top. That's a very big fund. Some time ago I also lost 0.03BTC, not too big when compared to the news on this topic, it seems to use the same model because I also use an email verification code and mobile number. Ah, hackers who are truly beloved, don't you know that making people sad is a cruel act?

There is a need to secure the funds with this kind of situation a huge amount of bitcoin lost. Exactly when you stored btc in an online wallet it can possibly be hack so we should be careful and must find the best wallet to store our assets. Securing btc is very significant to protect our money.

Omg, I know that I'm not a big target, but I think it's a good time for me to put 2-factor authentication.
These guys doing smarter hustles each day.

That is our obligation to take care of our funds or otherwise, we are the next one to suffer such losses. This makes us think about how important to have 2FA authentication for additional security and make hackers not easily broke the keys.

But I can't imagine how this guy( as mentioned by OP) letting it happen to know that he can be a possible target for hackers cause of his position and the amounts that he has been holding. It was a bad experience and nobody wants it, and may others would take this seriously.

That's a lot and I think if he has $24 million worth of bitcoin, he must invest on his security as well instead of just landing it online. Must be a lesson for all of us here that other than buying things we want, let's focus on what we need first like having hardware wallet like ledgers. I'm pretty sure he let his guard down when it comes to security of his funds.

Seems simple? In a way, but its also problem for traders that NEED to keep funds online on exchange while trading then to wallet they can access quickly to send funds back to exchange. You can't play safe game then.
There are cases that involves higher risk.

I can't give solution for bitcoin holder what have to do, by selling I think have lost much money because pride down but keep holding is not good solution with bitcoin price keep goes down, maybe close your phone or your computer and looking good viewer in your forest, nothing you can do with bitcoin price still down and re investing maybe will make bitcoin keep down.

$ 24,000,000.00   Is nothing compared to what you all are going to lose when the price of Bitcoin goes to its intrinsic value of near ZERO 🎈🎈🎈🎈     Given the price collapse we are seeing now, you guys are way to confident.   I think Bitcoin below 1,000.00 will take that confidence out of a bunch of you 🤣🤣🤣🤣


You can ignore reality, but you can not ignore the CONSEQUENCES of ignoring reality....  ( seeing our bitcoin becoming virtually worthless in this case )


Hard Facts

Can you imagine for second being an investor losing 24 million dollars within a split second? That would make me want to give up on life. Stories like these are what scare away investors to Bitcoin who have no formal knowledge of cyber security. Securing Bitcoin is a hassle and knowing that at any moment, your entire investment worth millions could be gone at no particular fault of your own would scare the hell out of anyone even thinking about pouring their funds into crypto. These hacks are not going to stop and security can only do so much until a vulnerability is found and stealing Bitcoin from naive investors is only going to happen more when mainstream adoption happens. There probably needs to be more emphasis on physical storage in secure locations rather than phone/internet storage.

This is the right attitude, even if we do not have an amount of money that is anywhere close to the quantity in the title of this thread we need to take care of our money to the best of our abilities, while hackers are using the very same techniques that they employ to steal fiat from people we must remember that those that use fiat have the whole banking system behind them which protects them from them but in our case we only have ourselves to protect our coins.

We can’t really say how negligent the owner is since we are talking about $24 million worth of bitcoin then surely he had gone through possible security that he could muster in order to protect his assets but the thing is these criminals would always find a way and as the technology evolves then so as their methods. At this time, I think it would be smarter if we buy a cold wallet where details regarding that wallet along with the private keys should never been recorded kr transmitted digitally but rather a person should keep it physically and store it somewhere safe or if you can memorize it then why not but that would be too risky.

The OP is old news, but still I wish that companies would quickly move away from the stupid habit of using SMS or the user's mobile number as a means of implementing 2-factor authentication or otherwise verifying their identity. A system is as secure as the weakest link and mobile phone-based authentication is as weak as it gets. Phones can be lost, phones can be stolen, SIM cards can be swapped, phone company employees can be bribed, etc. Do you trust the safety and security of your multi-million dollar account to the integrity of some phone company associate?

Just do away with mobile phone-based verification already!

I am also sad to read this story hacking always happens in cryptocurrency a few months ago I also watched the news about a young man who managed to break into the American corporate network and hack it then asked for a ransom of bitcoin. cryptocurrency is very vulnerable to theft and hacking. therefore we always have to be careful when making crypto transactions and install security in our wallets using 2af. because hackers always have a way to break into our wallets.

Yes true that's really saddening and shows the vulnerability of crypto and wallets when it comes to security. These hackers are too cunning and ruthless they hacked my friend's wallet as well and got away with crypto worth $40,000 which literally made him broke. I think it's our responsibility as well to have security features enabled like 2FA and all.

I think this thing not be happened because if you hold a huge amount of Bitcoin you need to find some hardware wallet like trezor or anything like that, because at the first place you need to think about your security.

I always tell to my friends always make sure you are secured your computers, mobile phones and everything that is connected to something like money crypto
that will compromise it, having a authentication and other features to be able to relax everyday without having to think that is my phone secure my account secured?
those are the things that we should not want to happen to our life, having to wake up in the morning and realize its all gone, so please im begging you never ever
depend on one security always make sure there are one or more security features from any of those things

Based from my experience, you can't really tell them to completely stay anonymous and safe in cryptocurreny. Why? Because in cryptocurrency, there is allot of opportunities when you cosider yourself as a risk take, and being a risk taker involves you being able to try out new things. What we can just provide them that is considered effective is to separate their main account from accounts that could be use to experiement. In this regard, why don't they try to use offline hardware wallets to secure their funds.

Commoooon!

That's why it is important that we will tell this to people especially to our friends and relative to have extra precautions with this as they won't retrieve something that was hacked to them, so be very careful and always and be concern to other people, and if you are new and don't have any info, better to ask in forum or search for your safety..

Basically everything has its own risks. And the best thing that can be done is to understand the ecosystem to be able to take preventative measures. This precaution is useful to minimize the risk of loss, although there are still other risks that follow, at least we have tried. Because everywhere, there will always be "thieves".
In addition, we also have to prepare mentally and strategy, especially cryptocurrency full of mystery. Always remember, never invest money that you can't afford to lose.

I remember this thread yesterday, another problem with sim swap atack, this time the victim was my stepfather
The people who did this stole a good amount of money in the bank, pay some bills, take the whatsapp of my stepfather and asks money to his friends

It's incredible how easy you can lose a lot of money with this problem, and for me the mobile company have total guilty in these cases, because the only possible way to change a number of sim, is being present at a store with your id to prove

He learned his lesson tho.
Jokes aside, this is pain in the as@% for "old investors" used to stock market, banks and general no brain needed in terms of security.
Now when you are your own bank and YOU must handle all things that bank needs to handle so hacking, scams, not paying back loans etc etc it start to show human errors.

This is first in financial history that people need to gain big knowledge to invest/keep it safe.

This is not really the first time in history in which something like this has happened, in fact that is the reason banks exist at all, long time ago when people used gold those that had a lot of money were most of the time the targets of thieves and they had to find ways to secure their coins, this sounds familiar doesn't it? Eventually someone had an idea, to create a place where people could store their coins securely, it was a success, and then he began to use the money that he had in his vault to make loans creating what we know as a bank.