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A hack in the official X account of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) resulted in the dissemination of false information on the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF prior to the official announcement by the regulator.
Here is the SEC X hack detail as disclosed by the market regulator after sorting through the ordeal.
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The Specifics of the Hack
Chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement that the offender obtained access to the @SECGov X account on January 9, 2024, just after 4:00 p.m. ET. They were able to accomplish this by taking over the phone number linked to the X account. The hacker erroneously claimed that the Commission had approved the spot Bitcoin ETF registrations in their initial post, which was issued at 4:11 PM ET.
Like two postings from non-SEC accounts were among the other things the hacker did while still in control of the account. This came about after the malicious actor appeared to support something in a second post that he produced with the hashtag "$BTC." The author of the SEC X attack later removed this post.
It was stated that no damage was done to SEC equipment, data, systems, or other social media accounts, despite the fact that investigations are still ongoing. The public was made aware of the regrettable circumstance by way of Gary Gensler's official X account.
The commission cleared up any misunderstandings after the theft by stating that it had not yet approved the spot Bitcoin ETFs.
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Open an SEC X Account Now obtained
After the bad actor's initial post was removed and the "liked" messages were "unliked," the Office of Public Affairs officials managed to recover the account.
The @SECGov issued a fresh post announcing that it had been compromised by 4:42 pm that same day. Based on a request filed to X.com, it is suspected that the hacker’s access to the account was revoked between 4:40 pm ET and 5:30 pm ET.
In response to the news of the fictitious spot Bitcoin ETF approval resulting from the SEC X hack, Bitcoin moved. The coin's price showed significant fluctuation, erasing the majority of the gains it had made up to that point. Bitcoin dropped from $48,000 on Tuesday to about $46,000.
Notably. Since then, the market has not improved as seen by the current price of Bitcoin, which is $42,773.84, down 2.5% over the last day.