{"id":168697,"date":"2025-05-16T20:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T20:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/16\/us-man-who-hacked-secs-x-account-to-spike-bitcoin-price-sentenced-to-prison-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T20:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T20:23:10","slug":"us-man-who-hacked-secs-x-account-to-spike-bitcoin-price-sentenced-to-prison-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/16\/us-man-who-hacked-secs-x-account-to-spike-bitcoin-price-sentenced-to-prison-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"US man who hacked SEC&#8217;s X account to spike Bitcoin price sentenced to prison | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eric Council Jr., 26, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and three years of supervised release on Friday for participating in <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/01\/09\/sec-account-hacked-sharing-unauthorized-tweet-regarding-bitcoin-spot-etf\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the hack of the official X account of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The U.S. Department of Justice announced the sentencing in <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/alabama-man-sentenced-14-months-connection-securities-and-exchange-commission-x-hack-spiked\" target=\"_blank\">a press release<\/a>. Council and other hackers took over the SEC\u2019s X account in 2024 to falsely announce that the agency had approved Bitcoin exchange traded funds, or ETFs, which shot up the price of the cryptocurrency before later dropping.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><span class=\"wp-element-caption__text\">A screenshot of the fake SEC post published by hackers who took over control of the @SECGov X account on January 9, 2024.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to the DOJ, Council and his co-conspirators performed a <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/04\/25\/techcrunch-reference-guide-to-security-terminology\/#sim-swap\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SIM swap<\/a> attack against the cellphone account of a person who had access to the SEC\u2019s X account, which allowed the hackers to take control of their phone number. From there, the hackers reset the password of the SEC\u2019s X account, granting them control of the account.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/05\/16\/us-man-who-hacked-secs-x-account-to-spike-bitcoin-price-sentenced-to-prison\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Council Jr., 26, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and three years of supervised release on Friday for participating in the hack of the official X account of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The U.S. Department of Justice announced the sentencing in a press release. Council and other hackers took over the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":168698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-168697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}