FBI arrests man accused of hacking SEC’s X account in January

The FBI on Thursday arrested an Alabama man alleged to have hacked into the Security Exchange Commission’s X social media account, where he posted a fake message from agency chairman Gary Gensler, and caused Bitcoin to spike around $1,000.

Eric Council Jr. “conspired with others to take unauthorized control of the @SECGov X account” by taking over a phone number affiliated with the account and falsely proclaiming the agency had approved Bitcoin exchange-traded funds for listing on stock exchanges, the Justice Department said in a release.

An indictment unsealed Thursday says Council worked with other unnamed co-conspirators and used a technique called SIM swapping — in which a hacker tricks a phone provider to hand over control of an account’s phone number — to authorize access into the financial enforcement agency’s X account and post the sham announcement on Jan. 9.

Using a fake ID, Council acquired a SIM card associated with the victim’s phone number at a mobile provider store in Huntsville, Alabama. He then bought a new iPhone with cash and, along with the SIM card, obtained access codes to the @SECGov X account, DOJ alleges.

Council shared these codes with his co-conspirators, who accessed the account and posted a fraudulent tweet from the SEC Chairman, falsely stating that BTC ETFs had been approved, the changes say. As compensation for the SIM swap, Council was paid in Bitcoin, and, shortly afterward, he returned the iPhone for cash in Birmingham, Alabama.

He also searched online for terms like “SECGOV hack,” “telegram sim swap,” “how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI” and “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”

“Today’s arrest demonstrates our commitment to holding bad actors accountable for undermining the integrity of the financial markets,” SEC Inspector General Deborah Jeffrey said in a statement.