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Here’s how SIM swap in alleged bitcoin pump-and-dump scheme worked (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 months ago by Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to c/buttcoin@awful.systems
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[-] gerikson@awful.systems 17 points 2 months ago

After the SIM swap was performed, prosecutors said, Council then performed Internet searches that incriminated him in the fraud conspiracy. The searches included: “SECGOV hack,” “telegram sim swap,” “how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI,” and “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”

Ars having some fun selecting quotes.

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 11 points 2 months ago

I was going to say that hindsight is 20/20, but in this case the hindsight sounds pretty short sighted as well.

It sounds like Mr. Council was the fall guy for his co-conspirators. He did all the in person stuff, with his own face, and it doesn't sound like he thought particularly deeply about the need to cover his tracks until it was too late.

[-] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Considering he did a search for "how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI", he can't be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

It's fair for him to try and do an internet search for US federal police processes, but the question style does not inspire confidence.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 2 months ago

I should get in the habit of Googling "how to renew expiring fed mitm certificate" every few weeks for the microscopic chance the joke might some day pay off big time.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 16 points 2 months ago

you know, here in ZA (and across Africa) services got past the “your phone number is your security layer” thing in the early 10s because we had fraud and related issues way back

but no, the US is insistent that they have to retread that path and learn those lessons over. can’t go and learn from an african country, that wouldn’t be fitting of ~~an imperial hellhole~~ A First World Country

why no, I’m not salty about services making me have worse security settings at all, why do you ask…

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 10 points 2 months ago

Yeah security in the USA has always been pretty bad. Iirc it often had to do with monopoly like structures keeping the advances at bay because it costs money to upgrade. Did the bank cards move away from magnetic strips already?

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 2 months ago

they ever so very slowly started doing chip (not necessarily with PIN) from 4~6y ago, state depending

probably need to give them another decade.

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Did the bank cards move away from magnetic strips already?

Mostly. Half the time the chip will work. Half the time it fails because you inserted it too fast or two slow or because it was Tuesday so it falls back to the magnetic strip.

Surely this is more secure right? ... right?

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 2 months ago

lol god that’s even worse :/

so have nfc and value-capped transactions even made inroads there yet?

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

NFC: yes. Most new credit and debit cards have NFC. Can tap to pay at pretty much any retail store and some smaller businesses. There are still weirdly many phone models without NFC (especially lower end), but the situation is slowly improving.

Value-capped transactions: not really a thing if I understand right.

[-] self@awful.systems 6 points 2 months ago

it’s embarrassing as fuck though when NFC’s either broken at the terminal or really finicky, so you have to get the cashier to slowly, painfully re-request the payment twice before giving up and seeing if your chip still works

or you’re at Walmart or CVS and they intentionally disabled it in all their stores for asshole reasons

even more embarrassing: I accidentally call it NFT and the cashier knows what that is and thinks I’m a fucking idiot

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 2 months ago

“have you got tap?” / “can i tap?” is a common local verbiage here

(also “got snapscan?” but that’s more popular in some cities than others, depending how much inroads snapscan has made)

(we also still have a fairly healthy cash market)

[-] self@awful.systems 4 points 2 months ago

see I’m slowly shifting my vocabulary to tap unless I’m DIYing an NFC sticker into a project, but sometimes my cursed engineering brain takes over

maybe both should be tap. maybe it’s all tap. REST calls are now taps.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 2 months ago

"tapping the api"

checks out

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 2 months ago

okay wait there's one possible failure mode in this reference which we might have to consider

[-] self@awful.systems 3 points 2 months ago

this is only part of why Netrunner is the superior deckbuilder

[-] self@awful.systems 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

…fucking hell I’ve got Netrunner on the brain. the card game about socialist hackers doing the best they can with what they can scrap together, organizing an economic war against extremely well-financed and terrifyingly powerful but inefficient corporations that almost own the entire world and will if you don’t single-handedly stop them

and as if that wasn’t cyberpunk enough, modern Netrunner is completely free and built on a game system and concept appropriated from Fantasy Flight after they let the game go out of print (though you can pay a reasonable price for good-quality printed cards, and they adopted roughly Fantasy Flight’s seasonal model that lets you do a MtG style deckbuilder without the greed elements, which is very nice)

e: and Musk is quoted in the other thread like “huh huh huh we all want cyberpunk right but just the duster not the other parts” and it’s like motherfucker a used duster’s normal hazard protection for a dying earth, ask me how I know, and all the other parts of any cyberpunk that’s worth a damn are about how much you fucking suck

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Must thinks he's Case but he's actually Josef Virek only without the class.

Side note, the Wiki page for Count Zero is a trainwreck

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 4 points 2 months ago

Musk thinks he's a Mind but he's Joiler Veppers and will never understand that

[-] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You'd be surprised, but many countries with much lower GDP/capita have far more developed/sophisticated ICT services than the US, not to mention far more competition.

This is not just my personal view, I've had Americans (who have travelled the world) mention this as well.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 2 months ago

You’d be surprised

I wouldn't be :) have visited many of them, and worked in a fair couple too

what was shocking (on my first visit there) is how absolutely fucking antiquated US infra is across multiple dimensions. not shocking these days, I now understand so many of the reasons for it

that understanding also makes so much of what comes out of the US (and its weird obsessions with specific non-solutions) make a lot more sense

[-] BasiqueEvangelist@mstdn.social 4 points 2 months ago

@froztbyte oh I absolutely hate using SMS for authentication
I had to do some eGovernment-related stuff recently and I think I had to wait for and type in an SMS one-time-code like 8 times until I got what I wanted

this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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