T1451: SIM Card Swap
Adversaries may gain access to mobile devices through transfers or swaps from victims’ phone numbers to adversary-controlled SIM cards and mobile devices.[1][2]
The typical process is as follows:
1. Adversaries will first gather information about victims through Phishing, social engineering, data breaches, or other avenues. 2. Adversaries will then impersonate victims as they contact mobile carriers to request for the SIM swaps. For example, adversaries would provide victims’ name and address to mobile carriers; once authenticated, adversaries would request for victims’ phone numbers to be transferred to adversary-controlled SIM cards. 3. Once completed, victims will lose mobile data, such as text messages and phone calls, on their mobile devices. In turn, adversaries will receive mobile data that was intended for the victims.
Adversaries may use the intercepted SMS messages to log into online accounts that use SMS-based authentication. Specifically, adversaries may use SMS-based authentication to log into banking and/or cryptocurrency accounts, then transfer funds to adversary-controlled wallets.
Security context for executives and security teams
T1451: SIM Card Swap describes Adversaries may gain access to mobile devices through transfers or swaps from victims’ phone numbers to adversary-controlled SIM cards and mobile devices.(Citation: ATT SIM Swap Scams)(Citation: Verizon SIM Swapping) The typical process is as follows: 1. Adversaries will first gather information about victims through [Phishing](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1660), social engineering, data breaches, or other avenues. 2. Adversaries will then impersonate victims as they contact mobile carriers to request for t...
Executive priority
T1451: SIM Card Swap is an official MITRE ATT&CK technique. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate T1451: SIM Card Swap by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (initial-access), supported platforms (Android, iOS), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
Detection direction
- Validate whether T1451: SIM Card Swap appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
SIM Card Swap
Adversaries may gain access to mobile devices through transfers or swaps from victims’ phone numbers to adversary-controlled SIM cards and mobile devices.[1][2]
The typical process is as follows:
1. Adversaries will first gather information about victims through Phishing, social engineering, data breaches, or other avenues. 2. Adversaries will then impersonate victims as they contact mobile carriers to request for the SIM swaps. For example, adversaries would provide victims’ name and address to mobile carriers; once authenticated, adversaries would request for victims’ phone numbers to be transferred to adversary-controlled SIM cards. 3. Once completed, victims will lose mobile data, such as text messages and phone calls, on their mobile devices. In turn, adversaries will receive mobile data that was intended for the victims.
Adversaries may use the intercepted SMS messages to log into online accounts that use SMS-based authentication. Specifically, adversaries may use SMS-based authentication to log into banking and/or cryptocurrency accounts, then transfer funds to adversary-controlled wallets.
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Groups, software, and campaigns
G1015: Scattered Spider
Scattered Spider is a native English-speaking cybercriminal group active since at least 2022. [1] [2] The group initially targeted customer relationship management (CRM) providers, business process outsourcing (BPO) firms, and telecommunications and technology companies before expanding in 2023 to gaming, hospitality, retail, managed service provider (MSP), manufacturing, and financial sectors. [2] Scattered Spider relies heavily on social engineering, including impersonating IT and help-desk staff, to gain initial access, bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA), and compromise enterprise networks. The group has adapted its tooling to evade endpoint detection and response (EDR) defenses and used ransomware for financial gain. [3] [4] [5] Scattered Spider had expanded into hybrid cloud and identity environments, using help-desk impersonation and MFA bypass to obtain administrator access in Okta, AWS, and Office 365. [6]
G1004: LAPSUS$
LAPSUS$ is cyber criminal threat group that has been active since at least mid-2021. LAPSUS$ specializes in large-scale social engineering and extortion operations, including destructive attacks without the use of ransomware. The group has targeted organizations globally, including in the government, manufacturing, higher education, energy, healthcare, technology, telecommunications, and media sectors.[1][2][3]
All related ATT&CK context
Mitigation direction
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(3)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20.0 | 2.0 | Current bundle | 814a3818a664… | ||
| 19.2 | 2.0 | Older bundle | 814a3818a664… | ||
| 19.1 | 2.0 | Older bundle | 814a3818a664… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
- [1]ATT SIM Swap Scams
AT&T. (n.d.). UPDATE: Secure Your Number to Reduce SIM Swap Scams. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
Open source URL - [2]Verizon SIM Swapping
Verizon. (n.d.). SIM Swapping. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
Open source URL - [3]NIST Mobile Threat CatalogueSTA-22Open source URL
- [4]mitre-attackT1451Open source URL
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