Considered to be the high-profile hacking in the recent times, the hackers took control of the Associated Press Twitter account and tweeted “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”
Apart from @AP being hacked, the hackers also targeted @AP_Mobile, another account operated by the news agency and tweeted from the account: “Syrian Electronic Army was here. A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army, which is supportive of that country’s leader, President Bashar al-Assad, in its two-year civil war, claimed responsibility on its own Twitter feed for the AP hack. The group has in the past taken credit for similar invasions into Twitter accounts of National Public Radio, BBC, CBS’ “60 Minutes” program and Reuters News.
Following the incident that once again exposed the vulnerability of the social networking sites, as the news spread like wild fire, AP spokesman Paul Colford quickly confirmed the tweet was “bogus,” and White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that Obama was fine.
Immediately
after the incident Twitter suspended the account of the news agency @AP
and @AP_Mobile, even as it put out word through other accounts,
including that of its correspondents, that it was the victim of an
egregious hacking episode.Though it was not clear how hackers got the control of AP’s Twitter account, but there is possibility of the hackers managing it by mistaking a AP employee. Confirming this Mike Baker, an AP reporter, in his tweet said that the employees of the company had received a phishing email. He tweeted: “The @AP hack came less than an hour after some of us received an impressively disguised phishing email.
Phishing emails are disguised as genuine notification from a reputed company like Twitter and seek account information. Cyber criminals often use phishing emails to fool web users.
Even as the false piece of the news of the explosions was immediately denied by other journalists present inside the White House at the time of incident, the damage has already been done.
E McMorris-Santoro, Buzzfeed’s White House reporter, tweeted: “from here in the WH basement, this acct (AP) seems hacked.”
Michael Skolnik, editor of GlobalGrind, said that the AP tweet was an obvious fake as it was made from a web browser while the news agency always uses a tool called SocialFlow to push news through its Twitter account.
The biggest setback of the false news piece was borne by the stock markets that plunged just as the report came out, resulting in the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 130 points, or 0.9 percent, and the S&P 500 dropping 12 points, or 0.8 percent.
Meanwhile the FBI has already started a probe into the incident along with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher said:”I can’t tell you exactly what the facts are at this point or what we are looking for, but for sure we want to understand major swings like that, however short it was.
Commenting upon the Twitter Security issues, Stewart Baker, a cyber security lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, said: “At a time when cyber security and hacking have become top national security concerns, Twitter and its reach to hundreds of millions of users is coming under growing scrutiny for the risk of privacy breaches on the site. there was plenty of blame to spread around regarding Tuesday’s incident. AP should have had better passwords, Twitter should have gone to at least optional two-factor authentication months ago, and guys on the Street really should be thinking twice before they trade on Twitter reports. That’s risky.
This is not the first time false claims have been made from a hacked Twitter account. In February, Twitter account of Burger King was hacked. It then tweeted that the company has been acquired by McDonald’s.
Source: Northern Voices Online (NVOnews)
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