Tag: phone jacking

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Hey you, yes you, you the reader. Do you want to know a secret? I know something special about you. The fact that you’re reading this means that you are in the market for getting robbed.

I’m sure there hasn’t been a point in time, where you haven’t had the thought to give some stranger on the internet your hard-earned cash. Please keep in mind that hard-earned was said depending on your work ethic, we all know that results may vary. You say “no”? None of this sounds appealing to you. Don’t worry, that wasn’t my angle.

Humans, it has long been known that we are creatures of habit. We don’t like change much, so we often don’t like it when our plans have hiccups. This could range from something small like having to pick up a tube of toothpaste because you just squeezed your last bit this morning and now you have to add another item to stop for on your shopping list or, to something big like having your phone no longer working because it’s not in your name despite the fact it was fully functional the day before.

You don’t quite understand that last one? Don’t worry, I’m going to script it for you.

A Change in Signal

If you can, picture you’re using your phone for one minute and you put it down only to come back moments later to find that it no longer operates the same. You try making some calls, double check to see if you have any “bars” (“signal”, if you wanted to be technical).

You turn on and off the airplane mode, restart your phone, and still nothing. It’s obvious that something is off and this clearly isn’t normal, you shouldn’t try putting it off to deal with it later.

There is a super high chance that you could be experiencing SIM Swapping. SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) swapping which may go by other names like SIM hijacking, SIM splitting, or sim jacking (not sure how much I like that last one, sounds like a trip to HR), is the art of an attacker/hacker gaining control of your phone number.

Once your number is obtained, life for you is going to go from Netflix and Chill to Bodies by Drowning Pool pretty quickly.

Changing Faces

If you’re an advent reader of mine then you’ll already know or have a good sense of who would commit this act and why, but if you’re not, ask yourself the following. How could you have committed this heinous crime of not subscribing? Why haven’t you subscribed to keep up to date on when I post? And are you going to be missing out if you don’t subscribe? To that last one, I can honestly say “yes”.

Subscription shaming aside, this act is committed with the intent of the attacker becoming you. Why would someone choose you as a target you may be asking? As mentioned before, imposing as you can grant them access to everything you have and more.

They can intercept incoming messages meant for you. Some events have involved credit cards being charged and financial institutions trying to confirm if the purchase was legit only for the attacker to confirm in your place.

Ways to Phone Jack

So you may be wondering, how is something like this executed. I mean, clearly, there has to be some telltale signs before it even happens, right? Well…in most and by most meaning all, you’ll never know that your information is being collected.

This could be done by using keyloggers malware, phishing emails, or which happens in most cases social engineering. The attacker will be someone who has been in the same vicinity as you and has listened close and long enough to obtain enough information to pose themselves as you.

Enough to fool your cellphone provider into giving them more information that they may be missing to commit further attacks. Once that happens, the fun of trying to get everything back in order begins, depending on your response time when you find out your phone no longer has service.

Becoming Socially Unacceptable

At this junction, which is normal, you might be wondering how to prevent this from happening. Social engineering is tricky to catch, so you have to pay attention to everyone you’re within earshot of. Trying to do this constantly will drive you insane and pretty much overload your senses…well and at some point, you’re going to lock eyes with someone for a little longer than what’s considered to be normal, and you may end up weirding them out. The point is, you’re going to end up like Jim Carrey from the movie 23 and be uber-paranoid.

An easier and more sane solution is to be mindful of your volume in places where you’re required to verbally give your information as talking to the person as if you two are in a rave could end poorly since eavesdropping is an easy skill perk that we all have. If writing it down, make sure you are aware of people who may walk by as this could lead to them being able to perform “shoulder surfing”, this is a clever name I know. I didn’t coin it but still somehow, I can feel your judgment.

Some other countermeasures you can take instead of opting for text-based confirmations are, your cellphone provider will let you add a PIN (Personal Identification Number) to your account for an extra layer of protection. When making use of 2FAs (two-factor authentications) verification methods, opt for biometrics which relies on either facial recognition or fingerprint scanning as this involves confirmation of your physical being.

Another method is having a security key that looks like a flash drive but a simple tap or insert into the phone could be more secure if you didn’t want the hassle of trying to get your phone to recognize your face. It is highly advised to contact your provider as soon as possible if you get a “Number changed” or your phone stops operating normally, the effects and fallout could run into years of working to get everything fixed.

Within 5 hours a credit card statement of $7,845.35 could be in your name and that could be the prelude to what’s to come.    

Small Detour:

Check out this person’s experience with SIM swapping because their story is wild, click here.

Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then a big thanks to you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, or plug-in to follow.

Would like to give sincere thanks to current followers and subscribers, your support and actions mean a lot and has a play in the creation of each script.

Is there something I may have missed about SIM swapping? Script a comment below.