At a time when bad actors have devised quite many means to enrich themselves with ill-gotten cryptoassets, Mark Risher, the head of account security at Google has said that the Titan Security Keys has all it takes to save cryptocurrency holders from SIM-swapping, reported The Next Web on January 23, 2019.

Cryptocurrency SIM-swapping, a menace that has made several cryptocurrency big whales lose massive amounts of their digital assets to fraudsters is about to come to an end, thanks to an innovative device called Titan Security Keys, developed by Google earlier in August 2018.

For the uninitiated, cryptocurrency SIM swapping is a form of identity theft whereby cyberpunks deceive telecom operators into rerouting a victim's (a cryptocurrency investor in this case) mobile phone number to a SIM card in their possession, to enable them to transfer the digital assets of the victim to their crypto wallets.

As reported by Bitcoin Exchange Guide in November 2018, a 21-year old U.S. citizen who succeeded in stealing $1 million worth of bitcoin from Silicon Valley executives in the Bay region through this means was apprehended by the police.

In an Interview with TNW, Risher reportedly made it clear that Google's Titan Security Keys, a device that looks like a flash drive, makes it impossible for hackers to execute SIM-swapping attacks on their victims' devices as it uses cryptography to secure users' devices.

To enjoy the anti-SIM swapping feature of Titan Security Keys, a user is required to connect the key to a device (a laptop or smartphone) and log onto the account they are interested in protecting.

The procedure can be done via USB, NFC or Bluetooth.

Once the sign-in process is successful, the user must press a button on the Key which will cryptographically register the device to a user account permanently.

In essence, when next the user tries to sign into the cryptographically secure device, he/she must have one of the keys handy.

“There's no code that sends over the airwaves; nothing is sent to the telecoms operators. If your phone number has changed, Google won't even know about it, and if someone else has grabbed your phone number, they won't be able to orchestrate an attack,”

declared Risher, adding,

“it is a more robust form of 2FA than simply relying on a one-time code sent through SMS.”

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