The US Department of Justice announced yesterday that it had arrested two men (Eric Meiggs and Declan Harrington) in Massachusetts on charges of fraud and aggravated identity theft; the two men targeted prominent figures in the local crypto world and attempted to steal the beauty of over half a million dollars in cryptocurrency. The criminal technique of the two also aimed to subtract the credentials of access to social networks of local entrepreneurs and people who, presumably, could have paid large ransoms to get back into possession of their accounts used mainly in the workplace. The news interests us because the two have used a fairly modern technique and recently finished on the pages of newspapers, we talk about SIM swapping, a trend recently reported as potentially very dangerous by all the major computer security experts; through this technique the criminals are able to get into control of the SIM cards of the unfortunate victims, essentially transferring the number of the attacked phone on a SIM of their property and thus coming into possession of an impressive amount of data including, very often, those that allow the access to victims' online exchanges and bank accounts.

The SIM cards that allow you to implement this technique are easily available on the market and, once they have taken possession of the victim's number, cyber criminals are able to take full control of their online accounts. This explains why for months we have been repeating, following the indications of the major experts, that a multiplicity of email addresses must be created and that those linked to more delicate services (those that allow money management) should always be used on an ad hoc device, better a PC that a smartphone, which in turn should be kept as isolated as possible from unsafe internet connections. In fact, those who work in the world of encryption in a professional manner usually have no need to access their accounts at any time using their smartphone, so it is better to have a mobile wallet for everyday expenses, where to keep small amounts, while to keep our funds the wallet hardware is always ideal. Returning to the arrests made in Massachusetts, a spokesman for the Santa Clara County told the press that:

"The situation is quite serious, we are talking about kids between the ages of 19 and 22 who are able to steal millions of dollars in cryptocurrency simply by buying a 99 cent SIM card on eBay, putting it on a disposable phone and succeeding so, with a trivial phone call, to register thefts for millions of dollars. It is truly remarkable. "

For the rest it is not yet clear whether the two American boys have actually managed to steal half a million dollars or have only tried, the fact is that the accusations are heavy and the two now risk having to spend several years behind bars; this shows, however, how simple certain techniques have become and why it is necessary that we all begin to take greater care of the safety of our devices.