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The SEC’s Official X Account Was ‘Compromised’ and Used to Post Fake Bitcoin News

The US financial regulator says its official @SECGov account was “compromised,” resulting in an “unauthorized” post.

The SEC account’s compromise is arguably the most consequential hijacking of a public figure’s Twitter account since 2020, when three young hackers tricked Twitter employees into giving them access to a power internal tool that allowed them to take control of users’ profiles. They used it to post a scam messages to the accounts of users including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Kim Kardashian West offering to donate twice the amount of any payment users sent to the hackers’ Bitcoin addresses back to the sender. In that case, the three hackers were identified—in part thanks to cryptocurrency tracing evidence left on Bitcoin’s blockchain—and arrested within two weeks.

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