An Alabama man was arrested today by the FBI for his suspected role in hacking the SEC's X account to make a fake announcement that Bitcoin ETFs were

FBI arrest Alabama man suspected of hacking SEC's X account

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2024-10-17 19:30:05

An Alabama man was arrested today by the FBI for his suspected role in hacking the SEC's X account to make a fake announcement that Bitcoin ETFs were approved.

The Department of Justice said that 25-year-old Eric Council, of Alabama, and conspirators conducted a SIM-swap attack to take over the identity of the person in charge of SEC's X account.

"The conspirators gained control of the SEC’s X account through an unauthorized Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) swap, allegedly carried out by Council. A SIM swap refers to the process of fraudulently inducing a cell phone carrier to reassign a cell phone number from the legitimate subscriber or user’s SIM card to a SIM card controlled by a criminal actor. As part of the scheme, Council and the co-conspirators allegedly created a fraudulent identification document in the victim’s name, which Council used to impersonate the victim; took over the victim’s cellular telephone account; and accessed the online social media account linked to the victim’s cellular phone number for the purpose of accessing the SEC’s X account and generating the fraudulent post in the name of SEC Chairman Gensler."

The SEC's X account was hacked on January 9th, 2024, to tweet that it had finally approved Bitcoin ETFs to be listed on stock exchanges.