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Mobile phone users: Security experts have long warned against so-called sim swapping
Photo: Eva Blanco / imago images / Westend61
In the course of international police investigations, a hacking ring was smashed which is said to have stolen cryptocurrency of considerable value by accessing the cell phones of thousands of people, including several celebrities.
As the British National Criminal Police Agency (NCA) announced on Wednesday, eight young men were arrested in England and Scotland on Tuesday.
They are said to have come through their attacks on digital currency such as Bitcoins worth more than 100 million dollars, as Europol announced in The Hague.
According to Europol, one suspect had previously been arrested in Belgium and one in Malta.
All ten arrested are said to belong to the same criminal group.
Investigators in five countries were involved in the investigation, which lasted more than a year.
The 18 to 26-year-old men are said to have used so-called sim swapping attacks to gain control of the smartphones of athletes, musicians and influencers and to have abused bank details, personal information and social media accounts.
It is not yet known which celebrities were affected.
And how the perpetrators got the cryptocurrencies is not clear from Europol's communication.
A familiar scam
In the case of sim swapping attacks, the affected person's SIM cards are deactivated and the associated mobile phone numbers are transferred to another device.
One of the most famous victims of such an attack in the past was Twitter boss Jack Dorsey in 2019.
The UK's National Crime Agency worked with US authorities such as the FBI and the secret service in its investigation.
In some cases, the victims were able to be contacted before damage could be done, the authorities said.
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ala / dpa / Reuters
