Nowadays, when we hear of internet hacking and cyber criminals, it come to our mind individuals using sophisticated technology and advanced computer programming skills to create viruses which then infect your computer or mobile device; and that’s how hackers gain access to your email and social media accounts etc… while, in fact, hacking simply means exploiting system vulnerability regardless of the tools used to reach a specific goal.
In this article, I will discuss certain real life hacking tricks and techniques through which your email/social media accounts may be at jeopardy.
First of all, let’s assume the hacker in this case is someone who can obtain physical access to your phone for a brief period of time.
Second, the examples I will give in this article were used and tested an iPhone and I will assume you have an Iphone as well; moreover, you are confident that nobody can unlock your phone without the facial recognition or figure print or Passcode which nobody have access to but you.
In this case, there are three possible scenarios in which someone can hack you…. and just in couple of minutes and even without a computer.
For this article we will consider Gmail hacking as our example.
Scenario 1: Requesting Gmail Text/Call Verification Code
A Co-worker wants to hack your Gmail Account. Assuming the hacker is your colleague at work and he/she knows your phone number and that is all he/she needs to know. You leave your phone unattended in the charger “charging” thinking it’s locked and everything on it is safe. The hacker in this case will go to http://www.gmail.com
He/She enters your phone number then clicks “Next”, then “Forgot Password”
The hacker will have the option to choose to get a verification code either by “Text” or “Call” For this scenario we are going to choose “Text”.
When you buy a brand new Iphone one, it come programmed “by default” to always display a preview of all incoming text message on the notification center even when the phone is locked which people rarely pay attention to.
In this scenario, the hacker does not need to unlock your phone, but he/she can just take a look at the notifications and copy the victim’s Gmail verification code and then he/she can clear all the notifications, so that the victims does not notice anything and then go ahead to changing your Gmail password, unlinking your phone number from the Gmail account, changing the recovery email and also disabling the two factor authentication and that way you completely lose access to your Gmail account.
PS: Enabled two factor authentication using apps such as Google authenticator or Authy etc… does not protect the victim in this case as Gmail does not require a Google authenticator or Authy code to change a password “a Verification code via Text or Call is all the hacker needs”.
To fix this issue in iPhone, it is important that you disable all notifications from showing on your phone when Locked.
To do so, go to “Settings”, Type “Notifications”
Change Previews from “Always” to either “When Unlocked” or “Never”
Scenario 2: Programming a Phone to Forward all Incoming Calls
In this scenario, the hacker may or may not know his victim.
The hacker approaches the victim and requests to borrow the phone to make a quick phone call and then dials the following code **21* followed by the number to which the calls will be forwarded in our example we will assume that number is 510-555-0011 followed by #. **21*5105550011#
When dialing the above code, a screen should pop-up showing that the call forwarding has been successful
PS: **21* will not forward text messages but “only calls” , it also does not forward calls to international numbers. Finally, dialing **21* does not show in the victims’ call history, so the victim will have no clue you just dialed **21*5105550011# and all the victim’s incoming calls from now on will be forwarded to 510-555-0011.
After the Hacker has programmed your phone to send him all your calls. He/She can hijack all you calls which can be used for various purposes including hacking your Gmail account.
The victim’s phone will continue to forward calls until the victim manually disables the “Call Forwarding”.
To disable it on Iphone, the victim has to go to “Settings”, type “Call Forwarding”
You should see here the number to which your calls are being forwarded
Scenario 3: Taking over your Sim Card
For our last example in this article, I wanted to emphasize on a very important component in our phones which is the Sim Card. From my experience, Sim Cards in North America ( from different phone carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Google-FI, Verizon etc… ) come unlocked by default. While in many other countries, Sim cards usually come PIN code protected which I think is a very important security feature that we have to pay attention to.
Assuming in this case we go back to our example in scenario 1, you leave your phone unattended “charging” or our example in scenario 2, somebody approaches you somewhere and asks to borrow your phone to make a quick phone call. The hacker in this case can simply use a safety pin to remove your actual Sim Card and replace it with another one from same phone carrier that is fully functional, so you do not suspect right away that you lost signal or the mobile data on your phone is not working.
The hacker then can insert the stolen Sim Card to any phone and begin receiving text messages and calls to your phone number on his device.
This can be extremely dangerous if a hacker has total access to your phone number and it can be used to cause so much damage before you realize your Sim card has been stolem.
To enable SIM card PIN code on you IPhone go to “Settings” type “SIM PIN” and enable it (make sure you know your SIM card PIN code before you enable it !! ) or go to your phone service provider to enable it for you in case you do not know your pin code.
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