SEC X Hack: What Really Caused the Big Blunder?

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) official X account was breached leading to the release of fake news about the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF before the regulator made the official announcement.

After sorting through the ordeal, here is the SEC X hack detail as released by the market regulator.

The Hack in Detail

According to a statement released by Chairman Gary Gensler, the perpetrator gained access to the @SECGov X account shortly after 4:00 pm ET on January 9, 2024. They achieved this by gaining control of the phone number associated with the X account. The first post made by the hacker by 4:11 pm ET falsely suggested that the Commission had approved the spot Bitcoin ETF filings.

Amongst the other things that the hacker did while still in control of the account was to like two posts by non-SEC accounts. This was after the bad actor made a second post saying “$BTC,” a post that came off as an endorsement. This post was later taken down by the SEC X hack perpetrator. 

Although investigations are still ongoing, it was reported that no harm was done to SEC systems, data, devices, or other social media accounts. Members of the public were informed of the unfortunate situation through the official X account of Gary Gensler. 

Following the hack, the commission clarified the confusion, noting that it had not approved the spot Bitcoin ETFs at that time.

SEC X Account Now Retrieved

The staff of the Office of Public Affairs was later able to retrieve the account after which the first post made by the bad actor was deleted and the “liked” posts were “unliked.” 

By 4:42 pm of the same day, a new post was made from the @SECGov, stating that it had been compromised. Based on a request made to X.com, it is believed that the hacker’s access to the account was retracted between 4:40 pm ET and 5:30 pm ET.

Bitcoin reacted to the announcement of the fake spot Bitcoin ETF approval that stemmed from the SEC X hack. The price of the coin exhibited strong volatility, losing most of the gains it had amassed before that time. From a $48,000 price on Tuesday, Bitcoin pushed down to around $46,000. 

Notably. the market has not gotten better since that time as Bitcoin is now trading at $42,773.84, down by 2.5% in the past 24 hours.