Yesterday, the Associated Press (AP) had to suspend its main Twitter account, because its Twitter account was hacked and the hacker sent out a fake tweet saying, “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” The result was pretty damaging for the stock market.
Within a short time, the fake tweet about two explosions that had occurred at the White House and injured President Barack Obama spread all over USA and made a big impact upon US financial markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 150 points shortly after.
As soon as AP realized that its Twitter account was hacked, the news agency tweeted, “The @AP twitter account has been hacked. The tweet about an attack at the White House is false.”
Later the news agency suspended the Twitter account and advised all tweets should be ignored until further notice and Twitter also suspended the news agency’s @AP_Mobile account to prevent more false news from spreading.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters soon after the tweet was published that there had no explosion at the White House, and President Obama was fine. The financial markets that had dropped due to false tweet quickly recovered after Jay Carney’s speech.
On the other side, FBI said on Tuesday evening that the agency was investigating how hackers were able to send out the bogus tweet on the Associated Press’s Twitter feed.
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