New details emerge about SEC’s X account hack, including SIM swap

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission mentioned on Monday {that a} SIM swap assault was guilty for the breach of its official account on X, previously often called Twitter, earlier this month.

On Jan. 9, an unauthorized celebration gained access to the @SECGov account and displayed a fake post claiming the company had authorised the first-ever spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds. The cryptocurrency market moved following the unauthorized put up, with bitcoin costs initially taking pictures up to almost $48,000. Then, after the SEC clarified that it had not yet approved the bitcoin ETF, costs fell under $46,000.

“Two days after the incident, in consultation with the SEC’s telecom carrier, the SEC determined that the unauthorized party obtained control of the SEC cell phone number associated with the account in an apparent ‘SIM swap’ attack,” an SEC spokesperson mentioned in an announcement.

A SIM swap is when a telephone quantity is transferred to a different system with out the permission of the proprietor, permitting the unhealthy actor to obtain SMS messages and voice calls supposed for the sufferer.

With entry to the telephone quantity, the unidentified particular person then reset the account password. Since the SEC didn’t have two-factor authentication enabled, the SIM swap and subsequent password change have been the one two steps vital to realize full entry to the company’s account.

“While multi-factor authentication (MFA) had previously been enabled on the @SECGov X account, it was disabled by X Support, at the staff’s request, in July 2023 due to issues accessing the account,” the SEC mentioned within the assertion.

“Once access was reestablished, MFA remained disabled until staff reenabled it after the account was compromised on January 9,” the assertion continued. “MFA currently is enabled for all SEC social media accounts that offer it.”

The company had the power to modify two-factor authentication again on for his or her X account and weren’t reliant on X to take action.

X proprietor and Chief Technology Officer Elon Musk mocked the SEC, an company he has clashed with for years, after the company’s account on X was breached. Musk also retweeted a post from Twitter Safety following the incident, which mentioned the compromise “was not due to any breach of X’s systems.”

X didn’t instantly reply to CNBC’s questions about whether or not the platform has continued to cooperate with investigators, or whether or not the corporate plans to vary its design or any options related to authorities company accounts in response to the SEC account breach.

The SEC mentioned there was no proof the unauthorized celebration gained entry to SEC programs, knowledge, gadgets or different social media accounts. Instead, the company mentioned that “access to the phone number occurred via the telecom carrier” and that regulation enforcement remains to be investigating each how this particular person “got the carrier to change the SIM for the account and how the party knew which phone number was associated with the account.”

The SEC mentioned it’s persevering with to work with a number of regulation enforcement and federal oversight entities, including the SEC’s Office of Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Department of Justice and the SEC’s personal Division of Enforcement. 

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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