Hacker attacks escalate, Bitcoin users lose millions of dollars due to a mobile phone number

Hackers are turning to new tactics. With just the target's mobile phone number, they can steal all the money in the victim's bank and Bitcoin accounts.

According to Forbes magazine, the hackers obtained the phone number of the victim, Jered Kenna, after posing as him, and then switched the carrier of the number from T-Mobile to Bandwidth, connecting it directly to the hacker's Google Voice account.

The hacker then successfully locked out more than 30 accounts by resetting Kenna's email password, including two bank accounts, two Bitcoin accounts, and his Windows account.

The hacking of his bank account was not a big problem, after all, the bank could help recover the funds, but the stolen bitcoins were irrecoverable. It is reported that the bitcoins Kenna lost were worth "millions of dollars."

He said:

I was one of the early adopters of Bitcoin, and now I have lost all my coins and I don’t have the confidence to talk about Bitcoin anymore.

Unfortunately, Forbes points out that this is not an isolated case. Today, hackers will do anything to get Bitcoin, and everything can become a hidden danger of fund leakage.

Mobile phones as attack tools

Our daily lives are inseparable from mobile phones, but hackers use mobile phones against us.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), attackers prefer to use their phones to target the most vulnerable people.

The FTC says that in January 2013, there were 1,038 cases of phone fraud per month, which was 3.2% of all identity thefts. Now, in January 2016, there are 2,658 cases of phone fraud, which is 6.3% of identity thefts.

The exact number of digital currency thefts experienced by ordinary citizens is difficult to measure, but according to San Francisco startup Coinbase, the number of thefts from their customers at least doubled between November and December this year.

Attack target?

Anyone holding a large amount of Bitcoin is a potential target for hackers, as they know that Bitcoin transactions are difficult to track and are irreversible.

So who has been targeted by hackers?

Angel investor Adam Draper, owner of bitcoin incubator Boost VC, lost $50,000 to hackers two years ago, but he was unable to pinpoint the identity of the hacker and let the matter rest.

Bo Shen, a well-known blockchain industry investor, recently lost $300,000 worth of Augur REP tokens due to an attack.

Miner Joby Weeks had $100,000 worth of Bitcoin stolen, and also lost a lot of his Ether, Ripple and Monero reserves.

No expertise required

Surprisingly, the hackers in the above cases did not need any expertise. They only needed to obtain the victim's mobile phone number and transfer it to some carrier network with inadequate security measures.

Once hackers have mastered the two-factor authentication code (2FA, which adds a second layer of protection to your password), they can easily gain access to your bank account, email, social media account, and digital currency account.