The US Securities and Exchange Commission on 22 January 2024 revealed that hackers used SIM swapping to take over its X (formerly Twitter) account. The hack occurred on 09 January 2024, when a post sent from the agency’s @SECGov account on the social platform announced that a long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) was approved. The post caused the price of bitcoin to spike more than $1,000. Shortly after the post, the SEC Chairman announced on his personal account that the SEC’s account had been compromised and that the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products had not been approved.
See: https://redskyalliance.org/xindustry/don-t-pay-fines-for-deficient-cybersecurity-procedures
On 12 January 2024, the agency revealed that the hackers gained unauthorized access to the account shortly after 4pm EST on 09 January 2024. Immediately after identifying the incident, SEC staff deleted the hackers’ post, announced that the account had been compromised, and reached out to X, which terminated the unauthorized access between 4:40pm EST and 1730 hrs. EST.
In a recent update, the SEC revealed that the hackers tricked its telecom carrier to transfer the phone number associated with the X account to a SIM card in the attackers’ possession, and then used the phone number to reset the password for the @SECGov account. The account, the agency explains, had multi-factor authentication (MFA) disabled by X support since July 2023, when SEC staff had issues accessing the account. MFA was re-enabled after the incident.[1]
The agency emphasized that the hack did not occur via its systems and that it has found no evidence that the attackers gained access to SEC “systems, data, devices, or other social media accounts.” The SEC contacted law enforcement immediately after the incident and it has been working with the authorities in investigating the attack. “Among other things, law enforcement is currently investigating how the unauthorized party got the carrier to change the SIM for the account and how the party knew which phone number was associated with the account,” a SEC spokesman reported.
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[1] https://www.securityweek.com/sec-says-x-account-hacked-via-sim-swapping/
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