You can no longer post a message on Twitter just by sending an SMS… although the feature might come back at a later date.
Twitter’s official support account announced that the feature was being disabled on Wednesday evening, just days after Twitter’s own CEO, Jack Dorsey, had his account hijacked.
Whoever was responsible for spewing out a series of unsavoury tweets from the @jack account to millions of followers succeeded because they successfully tricked Dorsey’s mobile phone operator into giving them control of his phone number.
The technique, which uses social engineering to convince mobile phone operators into thinking you’re really the person whose number you’re trying to steal, is known as a SIM swap attack (also sometimes called a Port Out scam).
Twitter’s CEO isn’t the only person to fall victim to the scam in recent days. Other victims have included actress Chloë Grace Moretz, and a variety of YouTubers with large followings.
As I wrote earlier this week:
“if Twitter is going to accept SMS messages from your mobile phone number and automatically broadcast them to the world, you had better be feeling darn confident that no-one else is going to gain access to your phone – or seize control of your mobile number.”
With mobile phone operators too often being duped into letting fraudsters hijack mobile phone numbers through SIM swap fraud, and eve ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
