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Madame Web actress Sydney Sweeney recently had her cell phone number hijacked. To make matters worse, it happened on the same day her X (Twitter) account was hacked to promote a crypto meme coin scam.
According to 404 Media, a photo posted online shows a copy of a July 2nd Verizon Wireless receipt used in an apparent SIM swap of Sydney Sweeney’s cell phone number.
Printed on the receipt was, ““Hi SYDNEY SWEENEY, Thank you for your order. If you have any question [sic], please feel free to contact me.” The photo also shows an iPhone and its box on the trunk of a Mercedes-Benz S550.
The photograph of the receipt indicates that Sweeney was a victim of SIM swapping, where hackers take over a target’s phone number and reroute text messages and phone calls to a device that the attackers control. Swappers can do this in a variety of ways, such as social engineering a telecommunications company customer support representative to make the swap; physically going into a store and pretending to be the target and requesting the swap that way (or stealing the store’s tablet which can be used to perform swaps); bribing a company worker to perform the swap; or hacking into telecoms and using the company’s tools themselves.
“Verizon takes customer privacy and account security very seriously,” Richard Young, corporate communications at Verizon, told 404 Media. “When an issue is brought to our attention, we work quickly to investigate and remediate the issue, and work to ensure it doesn’t happen again. While we cannot discuss a specific customer situation, our approach in this instance is no different than any other.”
July 2nd is also the same day that Sydney Sweeney’s X account was hacked and published several tweets about cryptocurrency.
“Well I think it’s time $sweeney is now live 100mc incoming,” hackers tweeted on her X account. “At 10mc, 10% of the supply will be burnt.”
They also directed Sweeney’s X followers to a new Pump.fun meme coin and claimed she would be “going live on spaces soon.”
X
While the tweets on Sydney Sweeney’s X account have since been deleted, several other celebrity social media accounts like 50 Cent, Doja Cat, Rich the Kid and Hulk Hogan have also seen their X accounts hacked with similar messages, the New York Post reports.