The FBI has arrested an Alabama man who’s accused of hacking the Securities and Alternate Fee’s X account in January. The indictment (PDF) alleges that 25-year-old Eric Council Jr. labored with co-conspirators to take management of the account and publish a faux message from SEC Chair Gary Gensler about Bitcoin ETFs that brought on the worth of Bitcoin to leap by greater than $1,000 momentarily.
To hold out this scheme, Council is accused of making a faux ID utilizing the data belonging to the individual answerable for the SEC’s X account. He then allegedly tricked AT&T into offering a SIM card with the sufferer’s cellphone quantity and set up it into a brand new iPhone he bought. Lastly, Council was capable of acquire management of the SEC’s account utilizing restoration authentication codes despatched to the quantity, and later return the iPhone to the Apple Retailer the place he’d purchased it.
Investigators additionally discovered Council made some questionable searches from his private pc:
He later performed web searches for “SECGOV hack,” “telegram sim swap,” “how can I do know for certain if I’m being investigated by the FBI,” and “What are the indicators that you’re underneath investigation by regulation enforcement or the FBI even in case you have not been contacted by them.”
