Tech Savvy Student Steals $7.5 Million in Cryptocurrency

[uray]

Joel Ortiz, a skilled SIM Swapper was caught and arrested back in May 2018. On April 22nd 2019, the District Attorney’s Office of Santa Clara County made their formal announcement about his sentence – 10 years in prison.

Ortiz was a 21-year-old Boston High School valedictorian and was very prolific at stealing cryptocurrency from SIM cards. The announcement states that he had hacked the crypto wallets (worth over $7.5 million) located on mobile phones of over 40 victims.

If he could have used his skills to make a better world rather than doing these kind of activity he could have made a better living in terms of his career and his life, technology can be used for good as well as bad and it depends upon an individual morality on what he does with his skills and there is nothing wrong in locking him behind bars for his acts, as every action does have a consequence so that it will be a precedent for everyone to view in the future so they will not do those activities .

[rdbase]

Most students nowadays can learn simple hacking skills in their computer science class.
Some of their professors even encourage it for the reason of learning from it.
Although they believe it will be used for white hat purposes and not causing any harm to networks or stealing funds from banks or exchanges in this case.

[MakeMoneyBtc]

Well,that's what happens when people are not careful and do not care about their phone's security thinking no one would break into their wallets. I don't know if it is people's fault or phone companies fault for not taking care of the security of their clients sin cards because there was obviously a trick this hacker found out about and was able to break into the security of those phone companies to access the sim cards.

[Thirdspace]

Well,that's what happens when people are not careful and do not care about their phone's security thinking no one would break into their wallets. I don't know if it is people's fault or phone companies fault for not taking care of the security of their clients sin cards because there was obviously a trick this hacker found out about and was able to break into the security of those phone companies to access the sim cards.

it's not about "their phone's security" nor "people's fault" nor "security of their clients sim cards"
this is the negligence of the phone company worker in handing replacement sim card to an unrightful owner
you completely misunderstood the story here or did not read the article
stompix explanation should clear up your misconception on this "hacking" story

Do you know what a SIM Swapper is? A guy that goes to a phone company office and tries with a convincing story to have the victim's sim card replaced and handed to him. Then he uses that sim card to have all the passwords of the victim's social media accounts or exchange reset and takes control over them.

[xtraelv]

Ortiz was a smart hacker

Such a great talent and genius can be put to use for the benefit of the cryptocurrency industry.

I appreciate Joel Ortiz tech skills,

You guys didn't read more than 3 lines of that article, did you?

Joel Ortiz, a skilled SIM Swapper

Do you know what a SIM Swapper is? A guy that goes to a phone company office and tries with a convincing story to have the victim's sim card replaced and handed to him. Then he uses that sim card to have all the passwords of the victim's social media accounts or exchange reset and takes control over them.

There is no "hacking", no "tech-savvy" , he is at the same level as a guy trying to sell snake oil to some morons.

 

I agree - SIM jacking is not "tech savvy". It is a confidence trickster.

It is on par to stealing someones car by fooling the valet parking attendant into giving you the keys.


It is also foolish to tie your accounts to a phone number. Using text or email as your 2FA is like locking your house and leaving a note on the door reminding where the backup key is hidden.

Txt is not secure - it can be intercepted. With companies greedily trying to steal customers from other providers and service providers hiring people that are not aware of how much is at stake when they give a phone number to the wrong person - phone numbers are not secure.

Porting a number to another phone is relatively easy if you have certain information.

There are whole websites dedicated to phone jacking and stealing social media accounts for profit.

[Sithara007]

I think that he got away with a relatively light sentence. He destroyed the lives of so many people, and if I was the judge then I should have given a life without parole. Now he'll be out of prison after max 7-8 years and once he is free he is going to convert all his hidden coin stash to USD and then live comfortably like a king somewhere in Mexico (it looks like he is of Mexican descent, but not being a xenophobe here). As far as I know, the authorities were unable to recover all of his stolen coins.

[Alpha0One1]

Not good enough if you are caught. Best steals are those that become legendary like D.B. Cooper -> never identified or captured. 

[Evgenklm]

I think he knew what he was doing, because the theft is huge and there are millions of $.Accordingly, the term given is not small, of course sorry for the guy, still young, but all equal before the law.

[xtraelv]

Not good enough if you are caught. Best steals are those that become legendary like D.B. Cooper -> never identified or captured. 

D B Cooper may not have survived the parachute jump either.

[Kakmakr]

Paper wallets do not need mobile phone access and you can use my SIM card as much as you want, because you will never get to my main hoard.  The people who rely 100% on hot wallets to store their coins are simply stupid or uninformed about the dangers of doing that.

Yes, it might not be practical to sweep coins every time you want to use it, but it is much safer than having all your coins on hot wallets.  I also store those paper wallets in 4 different locations for better security. <No use having your main hoard in one place.>