This archive report was first published on 4 September 2019.
On September 4, 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey became the latest victim of SIM swap fraud, a type of attack that has been on the rise in recent years.
According to security experts, SIM swap fraud involves a hacker tricking a mobile carrier into transferring a victim's phone number to a new SIM card, allowing the hacker to gain access to the victim's social media and bank accounts.
Twitter said that Dorsey's account was restored after a brief time in which the attackers posted a series of offensive tweets.
However, security experts warn that this type of attack is not just limited to social media accounts. In Brazil, for example, hackers have used SIM swap fraud to take over victims' WhatsApp accounts, using them to ask friends for 'urgent payment.'
Experts say that the problem of SIM swap fraud is not going away anytime soon, and that it's not just a matter of individual users being targeted. In fact, researchers at the security firm Kaspersky say that security systems by many mobile operators are weak and leave customers open to SIM swap attacks.
"The interest in such attacks is so great among cybercriminals that some of them decided to sell it as a service to others," said Kaspersky researchers Fabio Assolini and Andre Tenreiro.
Security experts are calling on mobile carriers to do more to prevent SIM swap fraud, and on social media platforms like Twitter to offer better safeguards against these types of attacks.
