SEC Responses to Hack of Its X Account and False Announcement of Approval for Bitcoin ETF

According to the regulator's most recent report on the attack, it appears that it never lost account access.
On Friday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission declared that the entity that had earlier this week tweeted a phony approval notice for a bitcoin ETF had not compromised its systems or equipment. The SEC's official X (previously Twitter) account, @SECgov, tweeted on Tuesday that it had authorized several spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications to start trading. However, the message was later revealed to be fraudulent, as it was accessed by someone using the phone number linked to the account. The SEC released a timeline of events on Tuesday on Friday, stating that the first "unauthorized post" occurred at 4:11 p.m. ET (21:11 UTC) and that SEC Chair Gary Gensler's explanation was published fifteen minutes later.


According to the statement, SEC employees never lost access to the account since they quickly removed the phony post, unliked several more tweets about bitcoin, and posted an update on the official SECgov account. "Staff also contacted X.com to request help in stopping the illegal access to the @SECGov account. The statement stated that staff members "believe that the unauthorized access to the account was terminated between 4:40 pm ET and 5:30 pm ET based on information currently available." Rejecting allegations that the fictitious permission notification was an announcement that was already prepared and leaked too soon, an SEC representative stated on Wednesday that the FBI was looking into the matter. The spokesman also stated that the SEC did not write the message.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the Department of Homeland Security is also looking into this, according to the statement released on Friday. Almost a dozen bitcoin ETF applications were approved by the SEC on Wednesday, and they started trading the following day. A number of lawmakers were upset by the attack and publicly requested answers regarding how it occurred. In a letter released on Thursday, Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) requested that the office of SEC Inspector General Deborah Jeffrey launch an inquiry into the attack "as well as the SEC's apparent failure to follow cybersecurity best practices."The letter stated that future hacks might jeopardize public markets and their stability.