How Terrorists Exploit Virtual SIMs In Pulwama Attack

Harin


It was a fairly new method which terrorists across the border were using a "virtual SIM", generated by a service provider in the United States.

Almost all virtual SIM providers have no limit for one SIM card in terms of the number of virtual numbers.

The Pulwama terror attack on February 14 which left 40 CRPF personnel died was carried out with virtual numbers or virtual SIM, as stated by a recent report.

In the report, it claimed that Adil Dar, the main suspect, constantly contacted the JeM over the border via a virtual SIM number.

Here are all the things about virtual SIMs that you need to know and how it was used by terrorists in the Pulwama attack.

Officials said that the JeM terrorists coordinated the Pulwama attack with a “virtual SIM” from a service provider in the U.S.

With a virtual SIM, no local registered SIM card is required to activate the mobile connection.

The mobile number is generated through a computer. Depends on the service provider, the number can be either of US, UK or any other countries.

To make phone calls with the virtual number, the user only needs to download the mobile app belongs to the service provider.

The virtual number is connected to different social networking sites such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, or Telegram.

The user then receives the verification code from these networking sites on his smartphone for connection activation.

Virtual SIMs provide people with local phone numbers to make and receive phone calls from more than 50 countries.

The official said that the phone numbers that the Pulwama bomber used had a prefix of the United States, which is “+1.”

The mission of security agencies is to track the person who paid for the virtual SIM as well as the person who activated it.

A further investigation of the IP addresses of the virtual SIMs would also need to be carried out.

Indian officials would later send to the US a request to search for more details on the virtual SIMs' service provider.

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