'Bogus' AP tweet about explosion at the White House sends Dow plunging

Mike Gallagher

Apr 23, 2013 - 08:51

Apr 23, 2013 - 09:03

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'Bogus' AP tweet about explosion at the White House sends Dow plunging

The US stock market went into a temporary tailspin after hackers broke into the Twitter account of the Associated Press and announced that two bombs had exploded at the White House, injuring Barack Obama.

“Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured,” said the fake “alert” from one of America’s most trusted news sources, briefly fooling some news outlets and sending the Dow Jones plunging nearly 150 points — or 1 per cent.

The losses were rapidly recovered as it became clear that it was a false alarm, but coming just over a week after the bombing of the Boston marathon it took several minutes before it became clear it was malicious cyber mischief-making.

^{A screengrab of the fake tweet sent by hackers from the Associated Press Twitter account}

Russia Today was one of the few outlets that fell for it, re-tweeting the post and adding “More to come”, but later deleting the tweet.

In Washington, the AP’s chief White House correspondent Julie Pace was forced to interrupt the daily briefing in the White House press room to confirm what everyone in the room already knew.

“It appears as though AP’s Twitter account has been attacked,” she said, “so anything that was just sent out is obviously false.”

Jay Caey, the White House press secretary, then re-confirmed what had just been confirmed: “I appreciate that,” he said, “And I can say that the president is fine, I was just with him.”

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Syria Electronic Army, a group that is reported to have the tacit support of Bashar al-Assad, although that could not be independently confirmed.

The confusion quickly spawned a round of Twitter jokes comprising unlikely news events under the hashtag #APTweets. “Commercial flying experience now viewed as ‘pleasing’,” said one, in an ever lengthening series.

Other jokes focused on the failures of some US 24-hour rolling news networks when covering Boston bombings last week, including the disastrous decision by CNN’s John King’s to report that a suspect was in custody for the bombings — only to have to retract the report with the hour.

“Are you sure you didn’t just hire CNN’s reporters to cover your Twitter feed?”, asked one Facebook user on AP’s official page, which was used to confirm that the Twitter account had been temporarily suspended.

Associated Press joualist Mike Baker wrote on his own Twitter account: "The @AP hack came less than an hour after some of us received an impressively disguised phishing email".

AP said the incident came after hackers made repeated attempts to steal the passwords of AP joualists.

The agency also said that its mobile Twitter account, @AP_Mobile, had similarly been hacked.

A spokesman stated that all AP Twitter accounts are to be suspended until "until we can be assured of their security", and waed that followers should not respond to news posted by the accounts.

The cyberattack is the latest in a string targeting inteational media organisations, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Joual.