That computer security must be considered as one of the main activities of those who work with cryptocurrencies is well known; moreover, the lack of intermediation inevitably places the burden on users to ensure the safety of their devices also because, in the event of theft, there is no possibility of repayment. They learned at their own expense 75 Americans victims of the theft of a nineteen year old who, taking advantage of the technique known as SIM swaps, appropriated the fine sum of 1 million dollars; the Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance, who reports that Yousef Selassie (the nineteen-year-old author of the scam) now hangs nine counts of theft ranging from theft of identity to the aggravated theft, up to the violation of computer devices. According to the prosecution, Selassie allegedly granted illegal access to the accounts of 75 victims who were alleged to have stolen more than 1 million dollars in cryptocurrency using little more than an iPhone and a computer, all from the comfort of their Brooklyn apartment. As we have already explained, the SIM swaps is one of the most serious vulnerabilities of smartphones and allows cyber criminals to take possession of the phone number of the victim on duty in order to take control of financial accounts (not only cryptocurrency wallet but also home banking accounts) intercepting automatic messages or phone calls used for two-factor authentication security measures.

According to what is learned Selassie would have acted methodically, searching in the email accounts of the unfortunate information that they could attest to the possession of cryptocurrencies and then seizing them, it is therefore not known how many devices had to hole before arriving to select the 75 victims to which he subtracted the figure record of 1 million dollars. The SIM swaps today represents one of the main critical points when it comes to computer security and is one of the most dangerous attacks that can be suffered; to support it, among others, are the members of the Task Force REACT, a sort of American equivalent of our postal police, who have recently declared that they consider the "exchange of SIM" among their main priorities. To make things even more complex, in addition to the ease with which these kinds of attacks can be conducted, there is the risk represented by the telecommunications companies themselves and the infidelity of their employees; in fact, there are already several cases in which the attackers have availed themselves of the collaboration of employees of telephone companies who have intentionally abused their access to customer data to perpetrate scams. While therefore computer security experts from all over the world do nothing but point out that smartphones are unsafe and easy to attack, the paradox is that both the institutions and the companies themselves are pushing in the opposite direction, making two-factor authentication using smartphones more and more necessary; we also see it in our country where, following the introduction of new anti-money laundering regulations, almost all banking institutions found themselves forced to hook up home banking services to smartphone apps, withdrawing tokens for the generation of random keys and managing everything by sending codes on smartphones with great joy of those who use the SIM Swaps technique to defraud people. Here's what happens to people who don't even know how to set up an email on their phone.