Massachusetts Men Get Prison for Crypto Theft using SIM-Swapping

Two Massachusetts men have been sentenced on Wednesday for using SIM-swapping and other hacking techniques to steal cryptocurrencies and also taking over the social media accounts of many victims.

According to the Department of Justice press release, 24-year-old Eric Meiggs and 22-year-old Declan Harrington targeted executives of cryptocurrency exchanges, who have a high chance of holding a large number of cryptos. They also targeted high-value social media profiles.

The perpetrators illegally took control of the online accounts of the victims for stealing high-value things like cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies

By using cryptography, virtual currencies, known as cryptocurrencies, are nearly counterfeit-proof digital currencies that are built on blockchain technology. Comprised of decentralized networks, blockchain technology is not overseen by a central authority.Therefore, cryptocurrencies function in a decentralized nature which theoretically makes them immune to government interference. The term, cryptocurrency derives from the origin of the encryption techniques that are employed to secure the networks which are used to authenticate blockchain technology. Cryptocurrencies can be thought of as systems that accept online payments which are denoted as “tokens.” Tokens are represented as internal ledger entries in blockchain technology while the term crypto is used to depict cryptographic methods and encryption algorithms such as public-private key pairs, various hashing functions, and an elliptical curve. Every cryptocurrency transaction that occurs is logged in a web-based ledger with blockchain technology.These then must be approved by a disparate network of individual nodes (computers that maintain a copy of the ledger). For every new block generated, the block must first be authenticated and confirmed ‘approved’ by each node, which makes forging the transactional history of cryptocurrencies nearly impossible. The World’s First CryptoBitcoin became the first blockchain-based cryptocurrency and to this day is still the most demanded cryptocurrency and the most valued. Bitcoin still contributes the majority of the overall cryptocurrency market volume, though several other cryptos have grown in popularity in recent years.Indeed, out…