Almost three years have passed since the arrest of the first amount of 25,500 euros on March 24, 2020 until the arrest. removal of banking secrecy led last month to the arrest of eight people in Crete and Attica who were allegedly acting as “SIM pirates”.

Exploited breaches in the security of telecommunications providers for the process of replacing the SIM card, the attackers used fake authorizations and issued a new card to the mobile phone number of their victims. They then received bank verification messages on their device. electronic transactions and transferred sums of money to accounts under their control. The method of fraud, although seemingly simple, was particularly common at the time, with corresponding complaints in cybercrime will exceed 40 in 2020.

Early last month, the Office for Personal Data Protection fined two telecommunications providers €150,000 each for SIM Swap Fraud. The Office was asked to consider more than 20 related complaints from citizens. In their responses, the providers listed in detail what measures they had taken before April 2020, as well as what changes they had made before October of that year and after, in order to limit and combat the phenomenon.

Initially, it seemed that a third party simply needed to present an authorization, which is considered to be a genuine signature of the KEP or the police department, in order to follow the replacement of the SIM card. Along the way, some security measures were added, such as sending an informational message to the mobile number of the client, for which there was a request for a replacement or prohibition of the completion of the process by a third party. However, in its decisions, the Office considered that, despite the adoption of additional measures, the occurrence of new incidents from time to time is not prevented.

The first illegal transfer of money by members of the recently liquidated network occurred on March 24, 2020, and the amount ended up in an account corresponding to a commercial company based in Piraeus. According to the police investigation, 46,500 euros were transferred to the same account from the victim in Thessaloniki three days later. On 03/28/2020, during two different incidents, criminals stole 10,150 euros from a resident of Xanthi and 28,200 euros from a victim in Piraeus. In both cases, the amounts ended up in the account of a Pakistani citizen. In total, their production reached 124,430 euros.

The attackers, using fake authorizations and using security holes, issued a new card to the mobile phone number of their victims.

In their apologies, those arrested allegedly claimed that the transactions were legitimate, and only one admitted that they sent him fake permits from Athens (they had original KEP signatures in Moschato and the municipality of Athens) to continue issuing new SIM cards. postcards. “This is a serious case, and we are confident that it will be clarified and each accused will be punished in accordance with the degree of his involvement,” lawyer Eleftherios Kartsonas, representing the interests of the three arrested, told K.

SIM-swapping scams are usually preceded by the interception of citizens’ secret access codes to e-banking platforms. However, there is no evidence in the latest case file to explain whether and how these codes were extracted or how the victims were selected in Piraeus, Thessaloniki and Xanthi.

Dangerous stream

In another similar scam uncovered in November 2020, police determined that the attack began after the victim downloaded a torrent file containing a “cracked” version of the Microsoft Office program to their computer. As soon as he installed it, a series of malicious activities followed. A search on his device revealed AZORult malware, which can intercept saved passwords, as well as traces of STOP/DJVU ransomware.

Then nine people were arrested, six Greeks, two Pakistanis and one Georgian. Among them were the manager of a charity fund for families in need, where the money of the victims was transferred, the owner of a supermarket, a trader in a street market, and the police were looking for a Pakistani imam in a mosque in Attica. After an apology, those arrested were temporarily released, saying that they had provided other people with their accounts to deposit amounts of unknown origin so that they themselves would not be taxed. According to “K”the case is still at the pre-trial stage.