Hamilton youth charged after $46M in cryptocurrency stolen from U.S. resident was used to get gaming username
CBC
A Hamilton youth has been charged in the theft of $46 million in cryptocurrency after investigators learned some of it was put toward buying a gaming username.
Local police worked with the FBI and U.S. Secret Service to investigate millions in missing currency stolen via what's known as a SIM swap attack, said Det.-Const. Kenneth Kirkpatrick from Hamilton Police Service's cybercrimes unit.
The three agencies started working together in March 2020 after an American reported the loss.
On Wednesday, investigators seized $7 million in cryptocurrency.
Kirkpatrick wouldn't say the exact age or gender of the youth, or the username that youth bought. He also didn't say whether the youth was acting alone, saying the case is currently in Hamilton court.
But he said investigators cracked the case after the name was purchased on the gaming network.
Police said it's the largest individual cryptocurrency theft from one person that's ever been reported.
"The amount, of course, is very surprising," Kirkpatrick said. "That's a large amount of money, and it's a large amount of money in anybody's opinion."
A SIM swap attack is when someone manipulates cellular network employees to duplicate phone numbers, so that person can use the number to intercept two-step authorization requests.
In other words, if someone gets a code sent to their phone to recover a password, the thief can intercept that code to get access to the account, says Guy-Vincent Jourdan, a professor at the University of Ottawa's school of engineering and computer science.
Kirkpatrick said this is especially potent given that many people use the same password for multiple sites.
Jourdan, who isn't involved in this case, said cryptocurrency systems have a lot of weaknesses that can be exploited for fraud and theft.
"There's no regulation," he said. "There's no backup. There's no guarantee of anything," Jourdan said.
"If you use the normal banking system, then the banks are regulated. You can say, 'I didn't mean to do that transaction.' You can contact that bank, get the money back. There is centralization. There is control over it. There's none of that in crypto.
A long-serving United Church minister is preparing to leave his pulpit, adding pressure at a time when filling vacancies has become increasingly difficult.
Garrett Hawkins is on the cusp of making it to the big leagues. The pitcher from Biggar, Sask., has been added to the San Diego Padres 40-man roster.
Charlottetown Police and Fire Services are asking residents to avoid areas around Green Street due to a structure fire on Sunday morning.
Despite being born on a Christmas tree farm in Ohio, he wasn't really a fan of the holiday season.
A Hamilton hospital network is taking a closer look at how psychedelics might be useful in medicine.
Most people would prefer to spend the Christmas holiday weekend in warmth and comfort — but a Philadelphia man is going to spend it trudging 120 kilometres in the cold across Windsor-Essex.
Long before the first Calgary Stampede, the city attracted a different kind of cowboy.
After waiting four years to get his son the support the family says he needs to navigate school with learning challenges, a father from London, Ont. is fighting to make equitable healthcare and education a fundamental right.
Waterloo region and Guelph are under two yellow weather alerts warning of freezing rain changing to heavy rainfall Sunday, Environment Canada says.
A survey recently conducted on Prince Edward Island turned up a type of freshwater snail that experts say has never before been identified in the Maritimes.
A downtown Toronto long-term care home is rebuilding with a new design that considers lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, going beyond the province’s standards — but some say those standards are out of date.
It’s another wet and stormy day for much of Newfoundland and Labrador.
It’s been years since the tiny but aggressive European green crab made its way over to the Magdalen Islands, and some researchers in Quebec are warning it could be headed for the Gaspé next.