US Senators call for probe into SEC X account hacking

SAN FRANCISCO: US Senator Ron Wyden, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Cynthia Lummis, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, have called for an investigation into the hacking of US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) account on X.

The SEC saw its X account hacked for a brief time earlier this week, with a post claiming it has approved listings for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

The Commission, however, later approved a number of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) shares.

In a letter shared with Axios, Wyden has now called to open a probe into the agency's "apparent failure to follow cybersecurity best practices."

The SEC had said that an unauthorised party had hacked its account on X.

Elon Musk-run X later revealed that the SEC's account did not have multi-factor authentication (MFA) activated at the time of the hacking.

“Not only should the agency have enabled MFA, but it should have secured its accounts with phishing-resistant hardware tokens, commonly known as security keys, which are the gold standard for account cybersecurity," Wyden and Lummis wrote in the letter.

"X has permitted users to restrict access to their accounts exclusively using security keys and to remove phone numbers, which can be easily hijacked by fraudsters, since 2021," they added.

The Senators asked the SEC's inspector general to open an investigation and provide an update to Congress by February 12.

Meanwhile, Senators JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have also sent a letter to the SEC, seeking answers into the hacking.