What do the Associated Press, CBS and “60 Minutes” all have in common – other than being major news sources? They’ve all been hacked in the last few days.
AP had the unfortunate pleasure of having its Twitter account compromised early Tuesday afternoon, when a hacker used the account to tweet that there had been two explosions at the White House and President Barack Obama was injured.
Twitter did suspend the AP’s main account shortly afterwards, and the company subsequently released a statement from another one of its accounts confirming the hack. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney also confirmed in his daily press briefing that the president had not been harmed, as suggested by the tweet. The stock market also dipped temporarily, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping 145 points between 1:08pm and 1:10pm EST as a result of the tweet.
All, tweeting from @ap_politics and @ap_courtside is being suspended until we can be assured of the security of our accounts. Be back soon!
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) April 23, 2013
Of course, that didn’t stop other tweeters from having fun at the wire service’s expense:
