AP Twitter Account Was Hacked, White House Bombing Tweet Is Bogus

If you follow the Associated Press Twitter account, you might have read a pretty shocking post: “Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” @AP_CorpComm has now confirmed that the account was hacked and that the White House bombing tweet is bogus. Those who replied to the aforementioned tweet were definitely crying foul as no other major news networks were reporting the same news. Besides that the formatting was different from AP’s usual posts, note capitalization of letter E in ‘Explosions’ and the referring to the President by his name.

Soon after this tweet was posted the Dow index fell almost a 100 points, though it has recovered now. The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed responsibility for this hack and the spreading of false information. Only recently they were suspected of hacking several CBS twitter accounts, and last year they hacked Reuters account as well. The @AP and @AP_Mobile accounts have now been suspended, on the latter the following was posted: “Syrian Electronic Army Was Here.” Such hacking incidents are becoming increasingly common, if you do spot posts that are out of the ordinary for such influential accounts, do refrain from clicking on any links posted in such dubious tweets as they might be harmful.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: Hacking, Twitter