2 months ago
The FBI arrested the antheral allegedly liable for hacking the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) X relationship and utilizing it to marque a fake station astir the support of spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) successful the US successful January.
According to a statement by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, the man’s individuality is Eric Council Jr., a 25-year-old from Athens, Alabama. The fake announcement resulted successful BTC’s terms spiking $1,000, earlier crashing by $2,000 aft the SEC regained power of the relationship and issued a correction.
Council is charged with conspiracy to perpetrate aggravated individuality theft and entree instrumentality fraud. The FBI revealed that the onslaught was executed done a SIM swap, wherever Council and co-conspirators manipulated a victim’s telephone fig to entree the SEC’s X account.
Attack paid successful Bitcoin
According to the indictment, Council utilized stolen idiosyncratic accusation to forge a fake ID papers to behaviour the SIM swap, which gave him entree to the SEC’s societal media account.
SIM Swap is simply a societal engineering onslaught vector consisting of a atrocious histrion who uses the victim’s idiosyncratic accusation to instrumentality mobile work providers into porting the telephone fig to a caller SIM chip.
Thus, the hackers summation entree to each level wherever the unfortunate uses its mobile fig arsenic login credentials. Council allegedly presented the fake ID astatine a compartment telephone supplier store successful Alabama.
After posting the fraudulent message, Council received outgo successful Bitcoin for his relation and rapidly returned the instrumentality utilized successful the attack.
U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves emphasized the value of holding those accountable who manipulate markets done cybercrime. The Justice Department, the FBI, and the SEC’s Office of Inspector General led the investigation.
Millionaire crypto losses
SIM swap attacks are besides a accustomed onslaught vector applied by hackers to bargain crypto. In 2017, capitalist Michael Terpin lost $24 million aft a atrocious histrion compromised 1 of his wallets utilizing this method.
Moreover, a radical of 3 individuals allegedly stole implicit $400 cardinal successful crypto betwixt March 2021 and April 2023 by utilizing SIM swap attacks to summation entree to wallets.
As reported by Ars Technica, the radical utilized the aforesaid method allegedly applied by Council, printing fake ID cards and utilizing them to airs arsenic victims successful compartment telephone work supplier stores.
The station FBI arrests antheral for SEC societal media hack implicit fake Bitcoin ETF support post appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.
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