Eric Council Jr., the SIM swap hacker who helped compromise the Securities and Trade Fee’s X account final 12 months, made $50,000 performing related assaults and even searched the right way to inform if the FBI is investigating him, current filings present.
The current submitting was a part of the prosecutor’s request to sentence him to two years in prison over his position within the hack, which noticed the SEC X account publish a false announcement {that a} spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund was accredited, shaking up the markets.
Council searched: “How can I do know for certain if I’m being investigated by the FBI” and “How lengthy does it take to delete Telegram account,” US prosecutors found following a search warrant of his home, automobile and units final June, in response to a Might 12 courtroom submitting.
Whereas Council’s Telegram chats have been set as much as be eliminated after two weeks, US prosecutors nonetheless discovered chats of Council discussing SIM swaps with others believed to be positioned abroad.
Council additionally admitted to legislation enforcement that he obtained round $50,000 for performing SIM swaps for purchasers between January to June 2024. He marketed himself as a SIM swapping professional on Telegram underneath the username easymunny, providing companies for fee between $1,200 and $1,500.
How Eric Council Jr. pulled the hack off, then obtained caught
Council executed the SIM swap by creating faux identification paperwork to particularly impersonate somebody that his co-conspirators recognized as accessing the SEC’s X account.
These faux paperwork have been then used to trick a workers employee at telecommunications agency AT&T into reassigning the sufferer’s cellphone quantity to Council’s SIM card.
Council needed to share the final 4 digits of the sufferer’s Social Safety quantity and driver’s license to effectuate the SIM swap.
He then purchased a brand new iPhone from an Alabama Apple retailer, inserted the brand new SIM and shared the entry codes to the SEC’s X account along with his co-conspirators, who later posted the faux information concerning the spot Bitcoin ETFs on Jan. 9. The Bitcoin merchandise obtained official approval the next day.
Council obtained fee for the SEC SIM swap in Bitcoin (BTC) and different cryptocurrencies, the prosecutors mentioned.
Nonetheless, Council’s luck ran out on June 12, 2024, when surveillance brokers noticed him making an attempt to execute a SIM swap at an Apple retailer, impersonating one other sufferer.
Legislation enforcement executed a search warrant six days later and recovered a number of items of circumstantial proof, together with templates for faux identification playing cards on his laptop computer.
He pleaded responsible on Feb. 10, after a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging him with Conspiracy to Commit Aggravated Id Theft and Entry Gadget Fraud last October.
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The faux put up amassed over 1 million views earlier than the SEC confirmed it had been hacked roughly quarter-hour later.
The 2 bulletins resulted in Bitcoin’s worth initially rising $1,000 earlier than abruptly falling almost $2,000 shortly after, wiping out tens of tens of millions of {dollars} value of market positions.
The safety crew at X confirmed that the SEC didn’t have two-factor authentication put in on its X account on the time of the incident. The SEC claimed it initially had 2FA enabled however was erroneously removed by X Help following a request by an SEC workers member.
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