In a letter to House Republicans, Chairman Gary Gensler said the Securities and Exchange Commission is continuing to evaluate the scope of false social media posts made ahead of approval of a physical Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
Gensler said last week he was confident the SEC was taking its cybersecurity obligations seriously. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry, Rep. Bill Huizenga of Michigan, Rep. French Hill of Arkansas, and Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri.
Four Republican lawmakers have demanded a briefing from the SEC to investigate what went wrong. false post News of the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF was revealed to the institution’s X account in early January.
“I understand that the SEC’s Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs arranged a briefing for your staff on January 17 regarding Incident We are still available to answer any additional questions you may have,” Gensler said. From last week’s letter.
On January 9, a fake post was posted to SEC’s hundreds of thousands of followers. granted Approval for listing of spot Bitcoin ETF has not yet been approved. Gensler then quickly posted from his personal account that the SEC’s X account had been compromised.
X Confirmed in post On January 9, it was revealed that the SEC’s X account had been compromised when someone gained control of the phone numbers associated with the account. The platform’s security team noted that the SEC did not have two-factor authentication set up for the accounts when they were compromised. Criticism From someone in Washington DC
The agency officially opened on January 10th. Approved Spot Bitcoin ETF.
Multiple updates from the SEC
The SEC said multi-factor authentication was previously disabled for the X account but has since been enabled on all SEC social media accounts that offer it. update.
The SEC also discussed SIM swaps, a technology used to transfer someone’s phone number to another device without authorization.
“Among other things, law enforcement is currently investigating how an unauthorized party caused the mobile carrier to change the SIM on the account and how that party knew the phone number associated with the account,” Gensler said in the letter. “At this time, SEC staff has identified no evidence that any unauthorized party has accessed SEC systems, data, devices, or other social media accounts.”
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