In his statement, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin explained the behind-the-scenes of the hacking incident he recently experienced.
Buterin's account was taken over by hackers and cryptocurrency users were targeted using phishing, a fraud method. It has been reported that many users fell into this trap and lost their money to fraudsters.
In his statement on his social media account, Vitalik Buterin said that fraudsters took control of his phone number with social engineering tactics and the SIM Swap method. He stated that the officials of the mobile operator he was using were deceived and his SIM card was moved to another SIM card.
The attackers, who captured the phone number, were able to control the Twitter account where Vitalik Buterin added his number.
Buterin said that he did not use a two-factor authentication (2FA) type of security measure through his phone number, but he still lost control of the account because of the phone number he added to the app for Twitter Blue.
With the SIM Swap tactic, even accounts with two-factor authentication security measures turned on are at risk because fraudsters can redirect SMS sent to their phone numbers to themselves with this method.
*This is not investment advice.