Teen crook hacked into 75 phones and stole $1M in cryptocurrency: authorities

[Lucius]

~snip~

You are probably right, some people are extremely irresponsible and share their information everywhere, and sometimes they boast about the amount of coins they own. In fact, they are causing themselves problems in life, because such things should be private. It's not just about anyone being able to do us a SIM swap, it's also about physically endangering our property and lives.

It is a big responsibility on the mobile carriers who should introduce a much bigger check before issuing a replacement SIM card, but most are only interested in making as much profit as possible.

[QEHedge]

You guys know that there is a internet security company or nation state that would love to hire these kids.

Imagine a nation state working with their team of hackers with these kids and we see them hack crypto on a global scale.

[Niya]

The fact the he stole all the money from just 2 victims in my opinion means he targeted those users very carefully. Maybe he knew them in person or they are quite famous.

[luppecuppe]

We cannot prevent these frauds by only punishing them. People need good education. Those who do fraud need to be rehabilitated again. Or he'il be in prison for a while. When he gets out, he can commit that crime again.
Phones are more important than our ID cards because we carry all our information and money inside the phone!

[Eclipse26]

That's why instead of stopping people to use cryptocurrency because of this kind of matter, the government should make efforts to teach people how dangerous internet could be and give everyone knowledge to avoid scams and fraud. We are responsible for our own money and if we lose them, it's our fault for being careless. We can't stop them so we have to be educated for ourselves. We can't change them so we need to change and be educated. How can people will be that technology literate if the government is trying to stop people from learning it.

[Blitzboy]

I wouldn't call it a talent, he has skills that he uses in a bad way so he is criminal by definition. He could have some accomplice here, I surmise that do that initial pre-staging for him and then he do everything from behind. One lesson though, sooner or later the full hands of the law will caught them. One thing that can be an advantage for him is that he is still very young, at least he can still mend ways once he got a second lease of life.

I do not deny that he is a true criminal, but with what he did, with his skill at a very young age. The link above does not mention any of his accomplices. The problem is that he chose the wrong path, instead of being given to glory, he chose the criminal path, anyway I keep my opinion, he is talented.

[Spaffin]

I wouldn't call it a talent, he has skills that he uses in a bad way so he is criminal by definition. He could have some accomplice here, I surmise that do that initial pre-staging for him and then he do everything from behind. One lesson though, sooner or later the full hands of the law will caught them. One thing that can be an advantage for him is that he is still very young, at least he can still mend ways once he got a second lease of life.

I do not deny that he is a true criminal, but with what he did, with his skill at a very young age. The link above does not mention any of his accomplices. The problem is that he chose the wrong path, instead of being given to glory, he chose the criminal path, anyway I keep my opinion, he is talented.

The fact is that I see a completely different problem in this situation, except that the world has recognized another criminal.  I'm talking about the popularity of cryptocurrency and the authoritative security of cryptocurrency funds in the smartphones of its users.  Such news only undermines credibility and repels potential users and possibly new investors.

[Zionatin]

Great news that they are getting caught. At least this guy was clever. It is the stupid scammers that are lazy and put in 0 effort that annoy me the most. I am glad they traced and found him. He was clever but not clever enough. His transactions were kept too public I guess somewhere along the line he must have made a mistake and inserting a sim in the wrong phone or used an exchange that could track him. I bet that they probably won't let us know the outcome. I guess it is not meaty enough news to show the outcome.

[kotik085]

A minimum of 5 years is enough for this criminal to serve, because he did it intentionally and consciously. To harm two victims, this is a million dollar business and they caught him. There is no retreat and nowhere to escape, caught red-handed. No luck guy.

[Bonenx14]

Great news that they are getting caught. At least this guy was clever. It is the stupid scammers that are lazy and put in 0 effort that annoy me the most. I am glad they traced and found him. He was clever but not clever enough. His transactions were kept too public I guess somewhere along the line he must have made a mistake and inserting a sim in the wrong phone or used an exchange that could track him. I bet that they probably won't let us know the outcome. I guess it is not meaty enough news to show the outcome.

Such a criminal might be wrong to choose the path, because I think he has the ability. need to be guided to do good things in the future, the goal is that he does more useful things. the mistake he made right now was enough to some people, and he deserved the punishment that was in force

[HarmonyA]

Sim swapping hack is genuinely horrendous, almost all administrations use sim ID for confirmation, it's simply a question of time the whole banking to be tormented with sim swapping hacks as well.
We need palliative measures to protect our information from this ill, less more criminals would make use of it to render people penniless.

[stabledev]

2 factor authentication is a must these days. Don't put all your security on your SIM. Anyone who knows your number and is enough of a social engineer can just clone your SIM and get your coins.

[FanatMonet]

Probably the best option to protect against such attacks is to have 3 SIM cards, 1 for use in everyday life, 1 for mail, and 1 more for two-factor authentication on a cryptocurrency exchange. Even if 1 of them is hacked, this should not cause critical damage.

[bitzizzix]

Scammers' intelligence exceeds ordinary human intelligence and what we think is very safe but scammers can penetrate it in any way, and so far there are various kinds of scammers in different ways to get what is not their right and harm many people.
and what must be done by the government is to give a very harsh punishment to scammers, and to provide a deterrent effect for new scammers and even though it is difficult but it will minimize fraud in the crypto world.

[Eugenar]

Probably the best option to protect against such attacks is to have 3 SIM cards, 1 for use in everyday life, 1 for mail, and 1 more for two-factor authentication on a cryptocurrency exchange. Even if 1 of them is hacked, this should not cause critical damage.

It still depends, if your sim card that was hacked is the one that you mainly use for authentication then your accounts are still compromised. That is why I highly do not trust mobile systems to have all of my finds, I just use them for withdrawing amounts and I advice that instead of using mobile phones to store your cryptocurrencies, why not buy a ledger or trezor, there, they can't access your keys because it is written and is outside of the vulnerable system of internet.

[pakhitheboss]

I heard about a new kind of data theft using pu lic USB charging ports. Some of you might have heard or read about it. This kind of hacking or data theft is slowly becoming a major issues. It is better to always carry a power bank whenever you are travelling out.

The scammer use the charging port of your mobile to setup malware or virus in phone.

[isaac_clarke22]

I always thought that having 2fa provides the most of the security already, since it is like gonna be in contact directly to your phone and that would mean like no one would have access to it.

I heard these schemes already quite few times before, and it seems quite rare as of now but because it can do damage this big already, given that it is already done by an underage dude, exchanges, online crypto wallet services, as well as any online service that requires mobile phone numbers as part of verification process should at least add up more layer of security.

I am not sure if these hackers got a workaround with other security features like OTP authentication, but that seems the only alternative for me as of now.

[Lauren Smith]

They got caught because they were greed. You see what I'm saying about scammers. They never know when to stop. You would think someone would be happy with that amount of money but oh no they must want more. If this person stopped earlier they would have not been caught. Now they have nothing and probably getting jail time. Not very clever. It means nothing if you get caught.

[iRaMMuS34]

Yes, he should be put to jail minimum ten years. Because he really deserves that for stealing someone's money and spending it like for jewelries, lol, total jerk he is. I do hope that people in crypto will always find justice when we loss our money from this online hackers. They really making a run on us and we all know that billions of our money are being stolen already since inception.

He's 19, intelligent but dumb at the same time. Dumbness might wear away with age, but there's no way he's going to be the same after 10 years of jail. I think 5 years is enough to fully put him through the purge without fcking up the rest of his life. And if this lesson won't teach him enough, he'll do it gain and then should be locked up for a real sentense

[BlackFor3st]

Another day, another bad guy has been caught:

An alleged teen crook stole the identities of 75 people and swiped $1 million in cryptocurrency — all from the comfort of his Brooklyn apartment, authorities said.

Yousef Selassie, 19, used a sophisticated SIM-swapping scheme to take over the phones of people in 20 different states between Jan. 20 and May 19, 2019, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

He allegedly transferred his victims’ phone numbers to his own iPhones, enabling him to reset their passwords and gain access to their Gmail, cryptocurrency and other accounts. Meanwhile, his victims’ phones would suddenly go offline.

The stolen $1 million came from just two victims, authorities said. Selassie was arrested Dec. 5 in Corona, California, and extradited to New York.

He was arraigned Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, where he pleaded not guilty to 87 counts of grand larceny, identity theft and other charges. Justice Mark Dwyer ordered him to surrender his passport and check in weekly with a supervised release program. The judge did not set bail.

Authorities executed search warrants on Selassie’s Brooklyn and California residences, where they seized half a dozen iPhones, two Rolex watches, a monogrammed Gucci wallet and numerous pieces of high-end jewelry, according to court papers.

https://nypost.com/2019/12/18/teen-crook-hacked-into-75-phones-and-stole-1m-in-cryptocurrency-authorities/

It's just a matter of time before these bad eggs are going to be caught, either they make a mistakes or authorities are simply hunting them down. 5-10 years sentence will be enough for this criminals? What do you think?

This kind of act is pretty lame, even if they stole millions of dollars still it's useless if they will get caught. And this kind of news should be spread everywhere so anyone will be aware that scamming is not a good idea especially that the technology right now is keep on evolving and you can be identified easily by the authorities.

And I hope it will also evolve to crypto, so the hackers will think twice before they will commit any crime as I haven't read any news that there is/are hackers that were jailed because of hacking like the hacker of big exchanges especially the penetrator of binance.