An investor lost $24 million worth of bitcoin

[aarons6]

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.

[Dabs]

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.

[Silberman]

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

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.

[Quidat]

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.

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.

[Lizzylove1]

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.

[aysg76]

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

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.

[jekainvestor]

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 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.

[princesspoppy]

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!

[xiboothrezi]

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?

[Inkdatar]

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!

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.

[Victorious5]

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.

[Distinctin]

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.

[sehoon]

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

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.

[Velkro]

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.

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.

[Xxmodded]

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.

[HardFacts]

In my opinion lots of people lose their assets in such a silly to my mind way being too self-confident.  

$ 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

[Gyfts]

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.

[Silberman]

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.

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.

[GideonGono]

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.

[Soros Shorts]

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!