How to protect your SIM card from hackers

SIM card hacker: 🥇 In today’s article we will address the problem of attacks on our mobile SIM card, data theft by hackers and our recommendations on how to ⛔ protect ourselves from all of this. Be sure to read this interesting article that will save you from more than one annoyance!✌.

Hacker attacks are becoming more and more frequent.

Every day it becomes more difficult to keep our most sensitive personal data, such as bank account, cell phone SIM card, social network accounts, … secure.

Many times we don’t even realize that we are being victims of these attacks and that our data is not protected from these hackers whose only aim is to hack people’s personal data to misuse it.

Today we will talk about attacks on our SIM cards.

This type of attacks are known as SIM SWAPPING , SIM Swap or SIM card duplicate scam.

«To carry out this hacking, the cybercriminals ask the telephone companies for a duplicate SIM card by pretending to be the phone number holders»

There are also cases where these hackers get hold of machines capable of cloning SIM cards.

Once the hacker receives the new SIM and inserts it into his cell phone, it only remains for him to find out the bank to which the owner of that phone line belongs. To do this, he will only have to try the banks until he finds the right one.

The entities send you a new password to the telephone number associated with the account, since they already have the keys to access your bank account. The purpose of all this is the impersonation of your identity through the telephone number.

How do I know if my SIM has been hacked?

First, before we get into it, we should recognize when we are being hacked. The most obvious signs is the automatic deactivation of the SIM card we are using.

«As a consequence, we are left without Internet coverage and unable to make and/or receive calls»

If this happens to you, BEWARE, someone wants to hack your SIM card.

In this situation, what you should do is talk to your phone company to confirm if they have made a duplicate of your SIM card, supposedly requested by you.

If the answer is yes, report it immediately to your bank. Report the incident to the police and to your phone company. And, most importantly, change all your passwords as soon as possible (email, bank account, …).

How to prevent a hacker from duplicating my SIM card?

Hackers are very cunning people, but we can get ahead of them and prepare our SIM card so that when they come for our number they can’t duplicate it.

Although no one is safe from these attacks, we can make it difficult for them. For them, we are going to give you some recommendations to protect the SIM of cell phones from cybercriminals.

• Put a PIN or password to unlock the SIM card.
• Do not share the PIN with absolutely no one.
• Keep the PIN and PUK number stored in a safe place.
• Use a PIN or key to unlock the SIM card.
• Encrypt our data.
• NEVER use SMS as a two-step authentication method.
• NEVER store sensitive information on your cell phone.
• Be very careful with the use of bank accounts on the cell phone.
• Use a VPN to browse from mobile or any other device.
• Do not open attachments that arrive in the mail or any messaging tool if you do not know the sender.
• Do not share personal information on the Internet.
• Install an antivirus or security tool on your cell phone.
• Do not link your bank account to your phone number.

What are the SIM hacking techniques?

SIM Swap is the technique that we should be most concerned about today, but there are also other techniques that hackers use to get our SIM card that need to be taken into account.

The goal of these techniques is the same, identity theft, the only difference is that they are becoming less popular when it comes to perform them by hackers.

• SIM JACKER. This technique is a direct attack on the SIM card. It consists of sending an SMS with a spyware program that is activated once the person opens the message. This technique is related to a part of the SIM card software called S@T Browser. This software instructs operators to perform functions such as sending a short message, setting up a call, launching the browser, executing a command or sending data. By receiving a simple SMS through this technique, the hacker can:
  • Obtain the location of our phone and its IMEI.
  • Simulate the identity of the sender of an SMS.
  • Send scams.
  • Send premium number scams by SMS
  • Obtaining mobile information (language, connection type, or battery level)
  • …

• WIBattack. This type of attack is due to a flaw brought by cell phones, putting the WIB (Wireless Internet Browser) security at risk. In this type of attack, the hacker can make calls, send SMS, surf the Internet or have our location available at all times.

If you are interested in changing your SIM card PIN, you may be interested in reading about how you can change and/or remove your mobile SIM PIN without having to pay to do so by following a few simple steps. These steps can be performed for both Android and iOS (iPhone) operating systems.

If, on the other hand, you have already been a victim of the SIM card duplicate scam, we recommend that you read the advice offered by the OCU.

We hope you found this article useful to protect your mobile SIM card from being hacked.

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