Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin: SIM-Swap Attack Used By Hacker To Compromise X Account

According to recent reports, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum (ETH), reported that his social media account on X was hacked through a SIM-swap scam. Here are the details:

In a post on the decentralized social network Farcaster, Buterin explained that the hacker gained control of his T-Mobile phone number, which resulted in theft.

Buterin has confirmed that he has regained access to his T-Mobile account, which had been taken over through social engineering.

SIM swapping is when scammers trick mobile phone carriers into activating a SIM card they have with the phone number of their target.

This allows them to intercept two-factor authentication codes for the victim’s accounts.

Unfortunately, scammers used this tactic to gain control of Buterin’s X account on Twitter and promote a non-fungible token (NFT) scam, resulting in a loss of $691,000.

Says Buterin,

“Main learning regarding Twitter was:

A phone number is sufficient to password reset a Twitter account even if not used as 2FA.

Can completely remove phone from Twitter.

I had seen the ‘phone numbers are insecure, don’t authenticate with them’ advice before, but did not realize this. I don’t remember when I *added* the number; my guess is that it was required to sign up for Twitter blue.”

He also stated the fact that he’s happy to be using Farcaster because his account recovery can be controlled by an Ethereum address.

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