Well, unless you’re for some reason a worthy target, nobody is going through the social engineering effort to defeat SMS just to steal your data. If you’re going after random people just to extort some data or stuff like that, it’s way easier to just trick them into opening an executable or fall for a fake webpage.
Happened to me because I had an account on a crypto exchange. The attacker went in to my phone carrier’s store, likely with a fake ID, convinced the store they were me, then got a new SIM card and reset my password on everything they could with it. They logged in to my crypto exchange mere minutes after they got the SIM, saw the $0.03 in my account, and logged out.
Sometimes it’s less about the person that you’re targeting and more about what that access gives you.
Low level accountant? Office worker with an excel file full of passwords or has correspondence with your actual target at a different company that you can pose as to gain access into?
I’m not sure where this idea of high profile target comes from. The sim swap attack is pretty common. People just need to be in some credentials leak DB with some hint of crypto trading or having some somewhat interesting social media account. (either interesting handle or larger number of followers)
There are now organized groups that essentially provide sim swap as a service. Sometimes employees of the telco company are in on it. The barrier to entry is not that high, so the expected reward does not need to be that much higher.
Well, unless you’re for some reason a worthy target, nobody is going through the social engineering effort to defeat SMS just to steal your data. If you’re going after random people just to extort some data or stuff like that, it’s way easier to just trick them into opening an executable or fall for a fake webpage.
Authenticator to the left of me, SMS to the right, here I am Man In The Middle Attack.
Happened to me because I had an account on a crypto exchange. The attacker went in to my phone carrier’s store, likely with a fake ID, convinced the store they were me, then got a new SIM card and reset my password on everything they could with it. They logged in to my crypto exchange mere minutes after they got the SIM, saw the $0.03 in my account, and logged out.
Sometimes it’s less about the person that you’re targeting and more about what that access gives you.
Low level accountant? Office worker with an excel file full of passwords or has correspondence with your actual target at a different company that you can pose as to gain access into?
They’re just a step in the process.
I’m not sure where this idea of high profile target comes from. The sim swap attack is pretty common. People just need to be in some credentials leak DB with some hint of crypto trading or having some somewhat interesting social media account. (either interesting handle or larger number of followers)
There are now organized groups that essentially provide sim swap as a service. Sometimes employees of the telco company are in on it. The barrier to entry is not that high, so the expected reward does not need to be that much higher.
Hahah… of course, phishing doesn’t exist, right? Your SMS app knows that the website you paste your code into is the legit one, right??