Hackers send fake market-moving AP tweet on White House explosions
WASHINGTON |
(Reuters) – Hackers took control of the Associated Press Twitter account on Tuesday and sent a false tweet about explosions in the White House that briefly sent U.S. financial markets reeling.
In the latest high-profile hacking incident involving social media service Twitter, an official @AP account reported that two explosions at the White House injured President Barack Obama.
AP spokesman Paul Colford quickly confirmed the tweet was “bogus,” and White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that Obama was fine, just minutes after the tweet hit a little after 1 p.m. (1700 GMT).
But within 3 minutes of the tweet’s release, virtually all U.S. markets took a plunge on the false news in what one trader described as “pure chaos.”
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into the bogus tweet and its impact on the markets, SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher told Reuters in an interview.
“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,” Gallagher said.
Reuters data showed the tweet briefly wiped out $136.5 billion of the S&P 500 index’s value before markets recovered. Some traders attributed the sharp fall and bounce-back to automatic electronic trading.
At a time when cybersecurity 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.
A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army, which is supportive of that country’s leader, President Bashar al-Assad, during the two-year civil war, claimed responsibility on Tuesday 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’s “60 Minutes” program and Reuters News.
A Twitter spokesman declined to comment on the Tuesday breach, saying the company did not comment “on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons.” An FBI representative had no immediate comment.
“There’s plenty of blame to go around,” said Stewart Baker, a cybersecurity lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson in Washington. “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.”
For years, security experts have called on Twitter to introduce a two-factor authentication measure, which requires a two-step process to log in and which they say would greatly reduce such breaches.
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Syrian Electronic Army Takes Credit for AP Hack
Tweet claimed Obama was injured in White House attack
Screen capture ofA group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army appears to be taking credit for hacking The Associated Press Twitter account and sending out a fake tweet claiming President Obama was injured in an explosion.
The group claimed responsibility by tweeting the following: “Ops! @AP get owned by Syrian Electronic Army! #SEA #Syria #ByeByeObama pic.twitter.com/HTKoO6gIL6.” Being “owned” is the vernacular in the hacker world for a successful attack.
Linked to the tweet was also a photo of AP’s Twitter banner having been replaced by a Syrian Electronic Army graphic.
The Associated Press Twitter account generated some brief shock waves on Tuesday afternoon, when it sent out a tweet at 1:07 p.m. describing an explosion at the White House. “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”
The Associated Press confirmed the tweet was fake and their account had been hacked.
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Fake AP tweet latest hacking claimed by pro-Assad ‘army’
A tweet by the nation’s largest newswire about a catastrophe at the White House was nearly immediately shot down as false on Tuesday.
A fake tweet that claimed President Obama had been injured after explosions went off at the White House was quickly debunked by the Associated Press, which said its Twitter account had been hacked.
But a band of hackers who support Syrian President Bashar Assad crowed that they had sent Americans into a tizzy.
“This small tweet created some chaos in the United States in addition to a decline in some U.S. stocks,” the Syrian Electronic Army wrote on its website, referring to a brief, steep drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It claimed credit for hijacking both @AP and @AP_Mobile.
Overtaking the news agency on Twitter is the latest in a long string of attacks for which the group has claimed credit. The hackers pledge allegiance to Assad and call the rebellion against his government “an armed insurrection that seeks to lead Syria into a dreadful anarchy.”
Online, the group has waged a cyber war parallel to the real and deadly battles in the streets of Syria, harassing groups that back rebels and media outlets it sees as biased.
Earlier this week, the Syrian Electronic Army claimed to have hacked Twitter accounts for FIFA, the world soccer federation, and its president, Joseph Blatter. The organization has been trying to fend off allegations that Qatar – which backs Syrian rebels – bribed officials in order to host the 2022 World Cup.
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- AP’s Twitter account hacked; tweet about White House explosions was ‘bogus’ (thestar.com)
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- Associated Press tweets fake White House explosions after Twitter hack (metro.co.uk)
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- AP Twitter account hacked allegedly by Syrian Electronic Army; DOW plummets after erroneous tweet of ‘explosions at White House’. (grumpyelder.com)
