Earlier this month, the actress Sydney Sweeney started promoting a

crypto meme coin on her Twitter account. It was called Sweeney and there was a post saying

stay tuned to see what Sweeney can do. As you might be able to guess that wasn't

really Sidney Sweeney promoting that coin.

Shocker.

Exactly.

That's Joseph Cox, an investigative reporter and co-founder of 404 media.

Joseph covers hackers and the shadowy corners of the internet.

Sydney Sweeney had of course been hacked, but it was more complex than just your standard social media hack.

They have actually taken over her Verizon phone number as well, which is what granted them access to the Twitter account.

And the reason I know this is because I spend a lot of time in these online chat rooms where hackers gather and several people actually

posted this photo of an iPhone laying on the trunk of a Mercedes along with some sort of receipt or

invoice from Verizon and in big capital letters it said thank you for your purchase Sydney Sweeney

that was immediately suspicious I don't think said the Sweeney was going to be posting let alone a tweet promoting a

cryptocurrency but also some sort of receipt in the criminal chat room and that led me

down the rabbit hole of it looks like these hackers actually took over

her phone number as well.

How does a hacker do something like that take over someone's phone number?

So the practice is called Sim swapping or sim porting or sim hijacking. I usually say

sim swapping and basically what or Sim hijacking, I usually say Sim swapping.

And basically what that entails is a hacker

somehow tricking a telecom, be that Verizon,

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