AP twitter hoax, hacking, blamed for Wall Street drop as FBI begins investigation
Hackers took control of the Associated Press Twitter account on Tuesday and sent a false tweet of two explosions in the White House that briefly shook US financial markets.
Anonymous hackers may be behind the AP twitter hack which cause a dip in the stock market Tuesday
In the latest hacking incident involving social media service Twitter, an official @AP account reported that explosions at the White House injured President Barack Obama.
AP spokesman Paul Colford quickly confirmed the tweet was “bogus”.
The FBI are now investigating the hack which has been blamed for the sharp drop in financial markets as the news broke. The tweet put out by hackers briefly resulted in the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling about 143 points, from 14,697 to 14,554, after the fake Twitter posting, but quickly recovered.
White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed that the incident was a hoax.
“This is yet another reminder that social media isn’t simply banal messages about breakfast between teenagers, but that it can have massive, real-world consequences,” says Jeff Hancock, a Cornell University communications and information science professor. “Our trust of social media has reached new levels. (Wall Street’s) response also highlights that humans have a built-in truth bias to believe what others say. Although there is a lot of suspicion about the Internet in general, the truth bias is alive and well with social media.”
[…] card information at risk. Even the Associated Press is vulnerable to hacking attempts. In 2013, the AP’s Twitter account was hacked, and the hackers led some to believe the president himself was injured in a […]