US man who hacked SEC’s X account to spike Bitcoin price sentenced to prison

Eric Council Jr., 26, was sentenced to 14 months successful situation and 3 years of supervised merchandise connected Friday for participating successful the hack of the authoritative X relationship of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced the sentencing successful a property release. Council and different hackers took implicit the SEC’s X relationship successful 2024 to falsely denote that the bureau had approved Bitcoin speech traded funds, oregon ETFs, which changeable up the terms of the cryptocurrency earlier aboriginal dropping.

A screenshot of the fake SEC station published by hackers who took implicit power of the @SECGov X relationship connected January 9, 2024.

According to the DOJ, Council and his co-conspirators performed a SIM swap onslaught against the cellphone relationship of a idiosyncratic who had entree to the SEC’s X account, which allowed the hackers to instrumentality power of their telephone number. From there, the hackers reset the password of the SEC’s X account, granting them power of the account.