HACKERS PUT MARKET IN SPIN WITH TWEET ABOUT OBAMA ATTACK – Thursday April 25 2013

– Hackers backing Syria’s regime spooked US markets temporarily after they broke into the Associated Press’ Twitter account and falsely reported President Barack Obama had been injured after two blasts at the White House.
An alert on the agency’s AP account on Tuesday read: “Breaking: Two explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”
Almost immediately, the wire service posted via its corporate communications feed that its AP Twitter account had been hacked, before suspending the service.
AP spokesman Paul Colford later said the wire service had disabled other Twitter accounts following the attack and was working with the micro-blogging site to investigate the breach.
The FBI also said it was investigating the incident. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the President was not harmed.
Sharemarkets plunged as the report came out, with Reuters reporting the tweet briefly wiped out $US136.5 billion of the S&P 500 index’ value.
Online activists backing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad later claimed responsibility for the hack – the latest in a series they have orchestrated against high-profile news organisations. The group – the so-called Syrian Electronic Army – also successfully hacked the Twitter feeds of CBS News earlier this year – Adrian Lowe

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