Imagine waking up and finding your phone has no service. Minutes later, your email, bank account, and crypto wallet are being drained. This is the nightmare of SIM swapping, a cyberattack that has evolved into an even more dangerous form in 2024 and 2025. SIM swapping occurs when criminals trick or bribe mobile carrier employees into transferring a victim’s phone number to a new SIM card under the attacker’s control.

Once successful, the attacker receives all the victim’s calls and SMS messages—crucially, including one-time passwords used for multi-factor authentication. In its early days, SIM swapping mostly targeted crypto holders and celebrities, but it has now scaled into a widespread cybercrime industry, with reports of organized gangs in the U.S., Nigeria, and Europe carrying out coordinated campaigns. In 2024, Europol arrested members of a SIM-swapping syndicate responsible for over $4 million in theft, and the FBI continues to warn that losses are in the hundreds of millions annually.

What makes SIM Swapping 2.0 different is the use of automation and social engineering powered by AI: attackers now use stolen personal data from breaches, AI-generated fake IDs, and even deepfake voice calls to convince carrier support teams to port numbers. The consequences are devastating—bank logins reset, social media accounts hijacked for blackmail, and entire crypto portfolios wiped out. Defending against SIM swapping requires layered security: avoid using SMS-based two-factor authentication for sensitive accounts, and instead rely on authenticator apps or hardware security keys; set up carrier-level protections such as PINs or port-freeze requests; and monitor for sudden loss of cell service, which may be the first sign of an active attack.

For businesses, the lesson is equally sharp: tying account recovery to phone numbers is increasingly unsafe in 2025. SIM swapping is proof that identity theft isn’t just about passwords anymore—sometimes, it only takes a phone number to steal an entire digital life.