An investor lost $24 million worth of bitcoin

[minersday]

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

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.

[Eugenar]

I lost some eth via hacker
Now I keep all my private key in paper

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.

[hello_good_sir]

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.

[alani123]

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.

[Yaunfitda]

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.

I beg to disagree, Sim swapping is very prevalent, [BEWARE] Sim Port Attack.

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.

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.

[maxreish]

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.

[gentlemand]

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.

[batang_bitcoin]

I don't think sim swapping is a huge issue nowadays

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

I lost some eth via hacker
Now I keep all my private key in paper

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 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.

[clickerz]

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.

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.

[blckhawk]

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.

[Google+]

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.

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.

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.

[bounceback]

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.

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.

[matchi2011]

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.

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.

[pooya87]

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

[joinfree]

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

[posi]

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.

[lepbagong]

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.

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.

[Murat]

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.

[asus09]

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.

[stompix]

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.

I beg to disagree, Sim swapping is very prevalent, [BEWARE] Sim Port Attack.

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:

The first time I can say I'm happy to be with Orange..

When I got my sim damaged I had to go in person to a store with my id card and my PUK code in order to give me a new one and on top of that I've had to wait until they've verified that indeed that was the original sim
Took me 2 hours of waiting and I've cursed them with every damn word in my fucktionarry but now reading this I'm quite happy things are like that.

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