Telefónica partners with Chainlink to prevent SIM card swap attacks
The Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica has announced a partnership with the decentralized oracle network Chainlink to provide security for smart contracts, preventing hacks and vulnerabilities related to Web3, including protection against SIM card swapping attacks.
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Telefónica is a telecommunications company in Spain and the fifth largest fixed-line and mobile telecommunications operator globally, primarily providing landline and mobile communication services in Europe and Latin America.
Telefónica has announced a strategic alliance with Chainlink Labs to secure connections between Web3 smart contracts and other GSMA Open Gateway APIs.
The GSMA (Groupe Speciale Mobile Association) is an industrial trade association founded in 1995, sponsored by mobile communication operators and related companies to promote common standards and deployment of the GSM mobile phone system. It currently consists of over 220 countries and nearly 800 mobile operators.
Through integration with Chainlink, not only can transaction security be enhanced, but information requests can also be sent to APIs through smart contracts, introducing an additional security layer to blockchain transactions to ensure that SIM cards have not undergone any unauthorized changes. Using Chainlink with GSMA Open Gateway APIs can also reduce risks other than transaction security, addressing issues such as double authentication 2FA and fraud detection in Web3 dApps and DeFi services. The operator Vivo Telefonica Brazil will be the first to commercialize this in Brazil.
SIM card swap attacks are a hacker tool based on identity theft and impersonation of financial account holders. This scam is prevalent in the Web3 industry, such as the false tweets posted on Twitter by the SEC just before the approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF, and the $400 million theft when the FTX exchange closed in 2022, both related to SIM card swap attacks.
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