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Nine Charged in Alleged SIM Swapping Ring

krebsonsecurity.com

1–10 of 41 posts

Re: Nine Charged in Alleged SIM Swapping Ring

#3
And this is why customer service representatives and retail sales associates are totally worthless.

Any store front, for any cellular service, is basically populated with the most useless people on earth. You could drone strike every single store that sells smart phones, killing everyone inside of all of them, and the world would be a better place.

When Douglas Adams wrote about launching the most useless members of society into outer space, on Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B, he was talking about these people.

Re: Nine Charged in Alleged SIM Swapping Ring

#4
post #2

Mobile phone numbers aren't unique and secure identification of users, stop treating it as such.

Or, phrased another way: we are NOT in possession of a phone number any more than we are in possession of an IP address. Both are transiently assigned to us to the computer with a cellular modem in our pockets

Re: Nine Charged in Alleged SIM Swapping Ring

#9
post #7
post #2

Mobile phone numbers aren't unique and secure identification of users, stop treating it as such.

What is, though?

A private key with an associated public key signed by one or more entitities that have verified the owner of the private key.

Re: Nine Charged in Alleged SIM Swapping Ring

#10
This is the result when companies follow each other. We need to see more innovation in authentication and leadership in best practices. Hijacking of phone numbers is not new and devs need to stop shifting liability to phone carriers when authenticating users to every little thing. Phone carriers have no incentive to secure users data or make the user authentication process more stringent. This results in the consumers being at constant risk, which I feel impacts society as a whole.
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