A Case Study of Indian SIM Cards used in China for frauds

By Author: by Suryansh Singh, Security Television Network

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    September 4, 2021 (Security Television Network) — The world is fighting from a global pandemic outbreak, leading to many factors lacking in strength. Research on deception in China has led to the interrogation of people who are disguised under fraud lenses. 

Focusing on the investigative conduct of scam on an individual’s behavior. 

Analysis by , Security Television Network Intern 

Abstract

Three things that have a huge impact on the world, and never deserve compassion, include: hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny. Cyber-criminals are constantly scouting the depths of cyberspace, looking for targets to attack. The motives for these attacks range from corrupt government websites (making political statements), to spreading malicious software (to produce enormous amounts of damage within and out of the system). Nevertheless, most hackers are motivated by money. This research will focus on cyber-fraud, “at the time of this writing, the principal hunting ground for scammers is online banking. Millions of people around the globe use online banking services for their everyday banking activities [as they] are quick and easy to use. 

One of the most severe threats to the volume of work and the telecom operators services’ quality is fraud. The constant development of new technology has given bad actors new methods of fabrication. The paper, in general, consists of the nine qualities considered helpful for identifying a subscriber to a scammer. The SIM card will be derived from the characteristics of a customer’s entry in the database (CD-r). An artificial neural network (AI) has shown promising prospects in classifying the problems according to their generalization capabilities. Therefore, it is a method of supervised learning with the help of a multi-layer perceptron that is used as a classifier.

Keywords – SIM Card fraud, Telecom fraud, Financial fraud, Intelligence agencies.

Introduction 

Mobile devices are playing the most prominent role in digitising the world. A single swipe from one’s thumb can help an individual create the glory of success and serve many purposes, like: communication, productivity, and endless entertainment within a single device. In the past few years, the role of mobile phones has influenced ways of personal identification. It allows verification at home, and aids a stepping stool to users during the pandemic through providing essential services such as E-shopping and E-learning. 

Nonetheless, there are also many negative aspects of mobile devices as well. The method of all of the verification and identification processes involves sending a single passcode to a verified user via OTP messages for confirmation in the form of SMS. Then, it must stimulate the phone user to provide that passcode concerning the point of authentication. The phone friendly passcodes are usually used for authentication factors by reporting Multi-factor authentication (MFA) as an account recovery mechanism. To primarily hijack the accounts as based under passcode authentication and privacy, attackers and hackers usually attempt the crime to intercept these verification passcodes through various means of hacking. 

There are tons of ways mobile devices and SIMs could be easily hijacked with a clever attack. The copy of any unauthorized scene can be easily changed and traced to the victim’s account and can easily regulate users’ details, which could lead to serious illegal activities. The basic attacks include drafting phone data, social media accounts, calls and messages, and bank corruption. The Indian inquisitive investigation agencies are engrossing towards detailed facts of about 1300+ SIM cards being fraud used by a Chinese crew, which unquestionably proves hacking accounts of Nation people, leading to financial fraud and moulding a gyp situation clash. The sum of all telecom operators started immediate concern to investigative agencies for the severe predicament. The Border Service Force (BSF) orders for investigative research over the pressing dilemma resulting in 1300 SIM cards being used to hack accounts. We examined the types of hijacking through various research methods trapped through data analysis and interpretation by conducting a Statistical & Qualitative Data Analysis from google forms.

Objective 

To Study the hijack of accounts as based under passcode authentication To analyze the opinion of different out lookers over concerned issues.  To investigate the immediate concern to investigative agencies for serious predicament.

Sim hijacking case studies –

SWAPPING ATTACKS AGAINST CELEBRITIES, United States of America –

 A sum of 8 criminals in the string was being executed to punishment on February 9, 2021, as the criminal results act through an international investigation into a series of swiping of SIM personal data which targeted the highlighted personality of the United States of America. The criminal executors were from Malta, Belgium, who mainly belong to the same criminal networking team. The SIM swapping criminals were orchestrated by a chain of thousands of victims throughout the year 2020, the list of all hijacking victims were sports personalities, musicians, social media influencers and their known families. According to criminals, the amount of 100 million in terms of cryptocurrencies were illegally gained by just hacking access to victims’ phone data.

The investigative agencies tied their note for a complete one long year jointly conjured by law and administrative officers by the sum of all countries, including United States, Belgium, Canada and Malta, with the help of international activity officially coordinated by Europol.

Chain of hijacking networks 

They are starting in the spring of 2020. From the study, it is shown how a network of dozens of criminals, working together to gain access to their victims ‘ phone numbers, and take control of your apps & accounts, as well as to change their password. The activity allowed them to steal money, cryptocurrencies, and any personal information such as sync contacts from an online account. Also, it has been hijacked social media accounts and sends messages hidden in the victim’s name. 

This type of fraud is known as “sim swapping” and has been identified as a significant increase in Europol’s recent Threat Assessment of Organized Crime on the Internet. It is assumed that the would-be attackers to take over, use the victim’s phone number is, in essence, is the deactivation of their SIM card, and how to move the number to a SIM card from a member of the criminal network. The criminals usually achieve this with the help of phone service providers, replaced by the name or address of a confidential one, or using social engineering techniques.

 Chinese spy, smuggling of 1300 Indian SIM on record  –

1,300 Indian SIM cards smuggling into China, which were hidden in his undergarments, Han, a wanted criminal in India, is said to have been known to smuggle in 1300. Indian, SIM cards have been acquired by falsifying documents and in China in the last two years. The survey also revealed that Han and his colleagues hide SIM cards in their undergarments to smuggle them out of India. A gang of people later used the SIM cards to hack their accounts and perform financial fraud, suspicious activity, the Chinese, the interview with the agency. South of the Bengal, frontier said in a statement: 

“Han, Junwei is on the wanted list as a criminal, and after a thorough interrogation and shocking facts came to the fore. So far, around 1,300 and Indian signs are to be exported in China, and with the help of forged documents, from India. Junwei and his companions mostly buried SIMs in his undergarments and ordered him to return to China. These are the SIMs used to hack into their accounts and execute various forms of financial fraud. Their goal was for people to be tempted to use the SIM card to get money from the machines, not for the money transactions.”

The bunch of all Chinese spies were arrested by Border Service Force (BSF) when they were trying to cross the border from the Indo-Bangla region at Malda. June is a resident from Hubie China who was executed by Border Service Forces, when they were trying to cross the borders. When the armed forces executed Han to prison, his Chinese passport with Bangladesh Visa, which includes a MacBook, pair of cell phones, both the SIM card registered of b Bangladesh and China, pair of pen drives , bunch of five transaction machine, pair of two ATM cards, and currency of all their countries (Bangladesh, United States of America and India). 

California : Joel Ortiz, accused for SIM Hijacking

This date belongs to the race of the world, online hijacking accounts, stealing, and the numbers of their victims. First of all, they have to block the users ‘ access to their payment method, portfolios, e-commerce and social media accounts to where the phone number will be used to log in, or you use two-factor authentication. They were then approached for the job, the money, to be paid in cryptocurrencies, with the threat of the sale of the bills and other vital records associated with it, such as online credit card information. Less-organized hackers have access to that money from the victim’s bank account or wallet. Hackers are taking the SIM connections in one of three ways. The most common one is called “the replacement of the SIM card with the call. In this case, they are the first to gather information about the target audience of your last name, first name, physical address, telephone number, date of birth, a password,  with the help of a phishing attack, or, the leaks database is located on the dark web (the part of the Network that is not tracked by the search engines). 

On the phone, who pretends to be the head of the operator and the customer service section, in the name of the transition to the new service. It will ask you to share the ICCID (integrated circuit card identifier) of your SIM card; you have a 19 and 20-digit serial number representing a specific SIM card. As soon as the request for replacement of SIM card is not activated, an operator will send the SMS messages to the license, and the user must press the push of a button or a grove of trees. The hacker will notify users in advance, making it easy to be caught up on the table. 

A Pune resident allegedly lost 93,000 yen in a SIM swap scam in the month of November. In June, Calcutta, a woman, reportedly fell for scammers, and within an hour, she had withdrawn from her bank account as much as 70,000 yen. As soon as the SIM-card replacement has been completed, with the original SIM card to be blocked, and in the number of active and will be for replacing the SIM card to the hacker.

The research methodology

The research method used in research is Qualitative, and through quantitative methods used to achieve the objectives of the work. The qualitative analysis role is the most crucial feature of qualitative research because Ii has played a key role in principle, being suitable for small samples, and the results have been tremendous and sensitive. The main advantage is one of the major differences in quantitative research because it is a description and an analysis of the topic of an individual study, without any limitation of scope study and nature of the participants’ responses.

The research paper survey was conducted with the help of telephonic interviews as students and faculty members are in their hometowns due to Pandemic. The sample size is 100 (50 males+50 female) . It was a snowball sampling as the students and faculty members who are composing ideology regarding the security issue of SIM hijacking all around the globe. 

We used qualitative methods to gather data about out lookers who may experience insecurity in SIM hijacking. These methods included surveys with various questions that assessed whether people ever felt insecurity or caught in scam, insecure about their personal data, and/or distracted from their regular work due to hacking/ hijacking. The surveys were distributed to 100 members (18-55years old) through google forms and linked in polls, 50 of whom were recipients of title accused in hijacking or fraud calls. The remaining 50 were a control group of people who were not identified as social hacking disadvantaged. 

Through the analysis we have set up the configurations in the following three categories:

safe, dangerous, and doubly difficult.

 In a double-hazardous structure specifying that the replacement of the SIM card is not sufficient to compromise the security of your account, the configuration makes use of SMS-MFA-and-SMS-password-recovery. A dangerous design can only be broken if the attacker knows the password to the account; these are configurations that provide SMS-based authentication, but it does not allow you to enter the password via an SMS message.

Data analysis and interpretation

What would be your step towards safety if you get trapped/engaged in SIM hijacking?

By conducting a Statistical & Qualitative Data Analysis from google forms, the sequel outcomes divulge that 40% of onlookers usher in not believing in fraudulent messages. The majority equal to cardinal response 40% audience advises complaining cyber-crime police department. Followed up with 10% are favoring immediate contact to customer care to stop the registered E-SIM activation process. The last culminating response verifies ones comprising all of the above-mentioned vital junctures.

Do you think revelation came after arresting a Chinese intruder Han Junwe?

Conducting a Statistical & Qualitative Data Analysis from google forms among 20 different ideologies and responses, the sequel outcomes divulge that 75% of onlookers agree with arresting Chinese intruder Han Junwe, whereas 25% have different opinions concerning the above research.  

Do you think the apprehension of Han JunWe can give pause to the SIM hijacking issue?  

Comprising all the qualitative survey, the result analyses from google forms among 20 different ideologies and responses, the sequel outcomes divulge on 65% of onlookers completely disagree with the above statement, whereas, 35% completely agree

Do you think the apprehension of Han JunWe can give pause to the SIM hijacking issue?  

After conducting a Statistical & Qualitative Data Analysis with different opinions over SIM hijacking and the interrogation of apprehending, Han Junwe can pause the SIM hijacking issue? The data clearly states that the majority, 70% believes in the whistleblowers of a nation, and 30% of them favor lack of planning and execution.

What could be the intended focus of Chinese hackers over SIM card fraud ?

After conducting a Statistical & Qualitative Data Analysis with different opinions over SIM hijacking and interrogation of apprehending, what could be the intended focus of Chinese hackers over SIM card fraud? The data clearly states that the majority of 45% of audiences seek their tight polls for avenge purposes followed by 30%with their own egocentricity/Self-benefit and 25% limited polls seek to weal neighboring relationships.

Conclusion

After analysis of the Survey, we have concluded that. Mobile devices are playing the most prominent bungling role in digitalizing the world. Fashion is affecting their attitude and individual behavior towards living life. The second side of the coin is usually not in favor of the positive one, the method of all these verification and identification involves sending a single passcode to a verified user via OTP messages for confirmation in the form of SMS then stimulating the phone user to provide that passcode concerning the point of authentication. It also analyses the opinion of different out lookers over concerned issues. The research also investigates the immediate concern to investigative agencies for the severe predicament. The Uses & Gratification and Cultivation theories apply to our Survey findings regarding research examination.

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Dr. James Hall
drhall@security20.com
(202) 607-2421