Associated Press Twitter Accounts Hacked, Fake White House Bomb Report Posted
A few days ago, CBS News’s Twitter accounts were hacked, and today the Associated Press was targeted.
LONDON (AP) — Hackers have compromised the main Twitter account of The Associated Press, sending out an erroneous tweet about an attack at the White House.
The tweet, which said that there had been two explosions at the White House and President Barack Obama was injured, came after hackers made repeated attempts to steal the passwords of AP journalists.
Here’s a screenshot of that tweet (h/t: Gus) - please note that this report is false. (And unfortunately, it was retweeted thousands of times in just a few minutes.)
It wasn’t just one AP account, either; @AP_Mobile was also hacked.
MT @ap_politics: All, AP’s mobile Twitter account has been hacked. Please do not respond to news posted by @ap_mobile.
— Michael Rusch (@weeddude) April 23, 2013
And if you ever wondered whether stock traders pay attention to Twitter, wonder no more:
DJIA drops +100 points after false report on Barack Obama twitter.com/RodrigoEBR/sta…
— Rodrigo (@RodrigoEBR) April 23, 2013
The Dow has since recovered, but an awful lot of money changed hands as a result of that bogus tweet.
Another interesting piece of info:
RT @mikebakerap: The @ap hack came less than an hour after some of us received an impressively disguised phishing email.
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) April 23, 2013
And we have our first right wing persecution whine already:
We’ll know the @ap twitter account is back in their hands when they start blaming conservatives for Islamic radical related terrorism again
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) April 23, 2013
Doesn’t matter what it’s about — any news at all instantly becomes another excuse for wingnuts to feel persecuted.
And now we have a claim of responsibility:
Ops! @ap get owned by Syrian Electronic Army! #SEA #Syria #ByeByeObama twitter.com/Official_SEA6/…
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA6) April 23, 2013