Security News > 2023 > June > UK hacker busted in Spain gets 5 years over Twitter hack and more
If you say THE Twitter hack, everyone knows you mean the one that happened in July 2020, when a small group of cybercriminals ended up in control of a small number of Twitter accounts and used them to talk up a cryptocoin fraud.
SIM swaps are where a criminal sweet-talks, bribes or coerces a mobile phone provider into issuing them with a "Replacment" SIM card for someone else's number, typically under the guise of wanting to buy a new phone or urgently needing to replace a lost SIM. The victim's SIM card goes dead, and the crook starts receiving their calls and text messages, notably including any two-factor authentication codes needed for secure logins or password resets.
By taking over the SIMs of three staff members at a cryptocurrency company, O'Connor and others drained nearly $0.8m in cryptocoins from corporate wallets.
SIM swaps are tricky to protect against, because the final decision to authorise a replacement SIM card is down to your mobile phone company, not to you yourself.
App-based 2FA generally depends on a code sequence generated by an app on your phone, so you don't even need a SIM card or a network connection on your phone.
If you can, visit a phone shop in person, with ID, to find out if your account has been taken over.