Hamilton youngster accused after $46M in cryptocurrency robbed from US citizen

Key takeaways:

Police won’t give the age of the person accused or gaming userID reportedly bought with some of the cryptos.
Hamilton police state a local youngster has been accused of the robbery of $46 million in cryptocurrency.

Hamilton youth charged for robbery:

A Hamilton youngster has been accused of the robbery of $46 million in cryptocurrency after probers learned some of it was put toward purchasing a gaming user-ID.

Local police worked with the FBI and U.S. Secret Service to probe millions in missing currency robbed via what’s known as a SIM exchange charge, stated Det.-Const. Kenneth Kirkpatrick from Hamilton Police Service’s cybercrimes unit.

The three organizations started working together in March 2020 after an American alleged the loss.

On Wednesday, probers took over $7 million in cryptocurrency.

Kirkpatrick wouldn’t declare the exact age or sex of the youngster, or the user-ID that the youth purchased He also didn’t say whether the youngster was acting alone, saying the instance is presently in Hamilton court.

But he said probers solved the case after the name was bought on the gaming network.

Cops said it’s the biggest individual cryptocurrency robbery from one individual that’s ever been alleged in North America.

“The amount, of course, is very surprising,” Kirkpatrick stated. “That’s a huge amount of money, and it’s a large amount of money in anybody’s opinion.” Source – cbc.ca

What is a SIM swap attack?

A SIM exchange attack is when someone operates cellular network employees to identical phone numbers so that an individual can utilize the number to seize two-step authorization requests.

In other words, if someone gets a cypher sent to their phone to restore a password, the robber can seize that cypher to get access to the account, says Guy-Vincent Jourdan, an expert at the University of Ottawa’s school of engineering and computer science.