Twitter Safety: ‘Compromised’ SEC Account Posts Fake Bitcoin ETF Tweets, Doesn’t Enable 2FA

Twitter has refuted claims by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the platform was responsible for fraudulent tweets sent from accounts that falsely announced 13 Spot approvals. Bitcoin ETF On Tuesday.

Following a preliminary investigation into the compromised account, Twitter’s safety team said: “This compromise was not the result of a system breach by He said. .”

Twitter Safety also highlighted in its tweet that two-factor authentication was not enabled on the SEC’s account at the time of the hack. This is a security measure that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler previously recommended to protect against identity theft and fraud. “We encourage all users to enable this additional layer of security,” the safety team added.

While the world waited to see if a spot Bitcoin ETF would finally be approved Tuesday afternoon, a “compromised” SEC Twitter account said approval was all but finalized. The price of Bitcoin fell from a two-year high of $47,680 to nearly $45,500.

After the fraudulent tweet was deleted, Gensler said the SEC had not approved the pending Bitcoin ETF.

“The (SEC) Twitter account has been compromised and unauthorized tweets have been posted,” the SEC chairman tweeted. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products.”

Late Tuesday, the SEC confirmed “unauthorized access and activity” on the SEC Twitter account. decryption The person responsible for the unauthorized access was fired.

“The SEC will work with law enforcement and government partners to investigate the matter and determine appropriate next steps related to unauthorized access and related misconduct,” the regulator said in a statement.

Twitter did not elaborate further on its findings, but some on the site suggested that the attackers may have engaged in SIM jacking, also known as SIM swapping. In this malicious attack, hackers trick mobile carriers into transferring the victim’s phone number to a hacker-controlled SIM card, allowing access to the victim’s phone calls, messages, and potentially online accounts.

Last January, trading platform Robinhood’s Twitter account was compromised through a SIM jacking attack and used to promote fake tokens and NFT scams.

etc suggested SEC employees may have been victims of social engineering, a psychological attack designed to trick individuals into disclosing confidential information.