US SEC Website Goes Dark for 6 Hours Amid Hacking Speculations

The official website of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), www.sec.gov, experienced a significant outage beginning around 11:00 PM Thursday, EST. Users attempting to access the site were greeted with a "page not found" error message, sparking concerns of a potential cyber attack targeting the regulatory body.

The outage persisted for several hours, with the website remaining inaccessible until the early hours of Friday morning, EST. While the site has since been restored to normal functionality, the SEC has yet to issue an official statement addressing the cause of the disruption.

Coinciding with the website downtime was a notable downturn in the price of Bitcoin (BTC), which fell below the $70,000 mark again from its historic peak. This convergence of events has led to speculation regarding a possible connection between the website outage and the cryptocurrency market's movements.

This incident follows a previous hacking in January 2024, where the SEC's social media account on X.com was compromised during the highly anticipated approval process for a Spot Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF).