The most significant theft of Bitcoin from a single individual was allegedly perpetrated by a Canadian teenager.
An unnamed youth was arrested past week on suspicion of thieving crypto-currency really worth roughly $36.5m from an unnamed sufferer who is situated in the United States.
It is alleged that the defendant applied a SIM swapping attack to attain obtain to the victim’s mobile phone, then utilised that obtain to drain the money contained in the victim’s digital wallet.
In March of 2020, Hamilton Police entered into a joint investigation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Solution Support Digital Crimes Task Force.
“The victim experienced been qualified by a SIM swap attack, a process of hijacking beneficial accounts by manipulating cellular network employees to copy phone figures so risk actors can intercept two-variable authorization requests,” mentioned the Hamilton Police in a statement released November 17.
“As a final result of the SIM swap attack, close to $46 million CAD truly worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from the target.”
Hamilton Police additional that “this is at this time the most significant crypto-currency theft described from one particular particular person.”
Investigators connected the defendant to the crime right after the teenager allegedly applied some of their criminal proceeds to make a buy online.
“The joint investigation revealed that some of the stolen crypto-currency was used to obtain an on the internet username that was viewed as to be exceptional in the gaming neighborhood,” mentioned Hamilton Law enforcement.
“This transaction led investigators to uncover the account holder of the exceptional username.”
Police would not reveal the age of the alleged thief, nor the beneficial username allegedly obtained with the stolen crypto-currency.
The teenager was arrested very last Wednesday for the theft of above $5,000 and possession of house or proceeds of property received by crime. Hamilton Police created multiple crypto-currency seizures valued at additional than $7m CAD (about $5.5m).
The make a difference is now right before the Canadian courts. Hamilton Police are asking anyone with facts about this crime to contact Hamilton Law enforcement Services Detective Constable Kenneth Kirkpatrick or phone the charity Crime Stoppers of Hamilton.
“The sum, of class, is very stunning,” reported Kirkpatrick in an interview with CBC.
“That’s a huge volume of revenue, and it is a huge quantity of income in anybody’s opinion.”
Some parts of this article are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-magazine.com