Elon Musk's X Confirms SEC Twitter Hack That Sent Bitcoin Soaring Was Caused By Lack Of Two-Factor Authentication

Elon Musk's X has issued a statement confirming the compromise of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account. 

What Happened: “We can confirm that the account @SECGov was compromised and we have completed a preliminary investigation,” stated X distancing itself from a breach of its own systems. 

According to the findings, the intrusion stemmed from unauthorized access to a phone number tied to the @SECGov X handle by an unidentified third party.

The social media company further clarified that the security breach was exacerbated by the absence of an additional layer of security. “The account did not have two-factor authentication enabled at the time the account was compromised,” X added.

We can confirm that the account @SECGov was compromised and we have completed a preliminary investigation. Based on our investigation, the compromise was not due to any breach of X's systems, but rather due to an unidentified individual obtaining control over a phone number…

— Safety (@Safety) January 10, 2024

On Tuesday the SEC’s official X account, broadcasted a message that falsely signaled the green light for Bitcoin ETFs across all registered national securities exchanges. Retractions from SEC Chair Gary Gensler and the commission itself followed. At the time of writing, the fake tweet that originated from the SEC’s account has been deleted from the platform.

Gensler on his own X account said the ETFs have not been authorized. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin BTC/USD exchange-traded products,” he said. 

The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted. The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products.

— Gary Gensler (@GaryGensler) January 9, 2024

Market consequences were immediate. Bitcoin’s price experienced a rollercoaster ride, with a momentary spike to $48,000, subsequent to which it plummeted to $44,900—all within a quarter of an hour, as per data sourced from TradingView. 

See More: Dogecoin HODLERs Are Beating Shiba Inu With 57% Landing In Profits, IntoTheBlock Data Reveals

Why It Matters: The platform under Musk’s leadership, disclosed to its user base in February 2023 that commencing from March 2023, the two-factor authentication (2FA) approach will be a charged service accessible exclusively to its Twitter Blue subscribers. 

Before Musk took the helm, the 2FA via text message was a feature offered to users at no additional cost.

X in a blog post on February 15, 2023, said, “Only Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to use text messages as their two-factor authentication method,” post-March 20.

Benzinga reached out to the SEC to obtain clarification regarding the two-factor authentication status but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Photo by Angga Budhiyanto on Shutterstock

Price Action: At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $46,147. down 1.16% in the last 24 hours, according to Benzinga Pro.

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