AP Twitter Account Hacked, Incorrectly Says Obama Injured At White House

[DonViejo]

Source: TPM

DAVID TAINTOR 1:22 PM EDT, TUESDAY APRIL 23, 2013

The Associated Press' Twitter account on Tuesday was compromised and posted a message claiming two explosions at the White House had injured President Obama.

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AP reporter Sam Hananel quickly posted on Twitter that the news organization's main feed had been hacked.

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The AP's corporate communications account called the explosions tweet "bogus."

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The AP's main Twitter account, which has nearly 2 million followers, appears to be suspended. The Associated Press did not immediately respond to TPM's requests for comment.

Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/ap-twitter-account-hacked-posts-message-claiming-obama

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Copies of the tweets at the link

[MrScorpio]

1. "#APPasswords" is now trending on Twitter

There are some good ones in there

[onehandle]

2. Find the little fuck and arrest him.

There's a difference between hacking into Burger King's Twitter and causing a panic.

[Bosonic]

3. Caused a micro financial panic

And This Is What A Full Blown Market Exodus Looks Like

260,000 S&P 500 e-mini contracts traded in the three minutes following the fake AP Tweet. That is ~$20.4 Billion notional value 'changed hands'. For those with trailing stops, our condolences...

the day - to get a sense of the scale of volume...



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-23/and-what-full-blown-market-exodus-looks

[Renew Deal]

4. Maybe the hacking and the volume are related

[AndyTiedye]

6. They Need to Look at Who Was Buying When the "News" Hit

Someone made a boatload of money on this.

[Sunlei]

17. wow yes, wonder who made the money!

[freshwest]

8. That's bad. I don't know how it shakes out, but hope they catch 'em.

I don't know what trailing stops are, did you mean to write stocks?

Any chance of preventing this happening again?

Not the AP being hacked - the market exodus?

Will people lose jobs farther down the ladder from this?

TIA if anyone knows.

[Posteritatis]

12. Ladies and gentlemen, the rational free market. (nt)

[Yo_Mama]

5. I don't find this an amusing stunt

I say find 'em and prosecute them.

[freshwest]

7. Oh, FFS! Who did this? MyGawd I woulda had a heart attack if I heard this.

[russspeakeasy]

9. No security or filter ?

[PasadenaTrudy]

10. Syrian Electronic Army

is taking responsibility for it...

[marshall]

11. Anybody know where John King was at the time?

Maybe he was getting back at whoever screwed him over with false information last week.

[PasadenaTrudy]

14. It was the SEA

Google it.

[jakeXT]

13. Either ban High Frequency Trading or restrict internet freedom.

Let me guess which one it will be.

So we had Ricin and this, I guess someone wants to send the president a message.

[AndyTiedye]

18. Neither

This sort of thing is somewhat self-correcting, traders who got burned on this won't be so willing to tether their financial success to a twitter feed next time.

We should certainly try to catch the crooks who planted the story though. This wasn't just a prank, it was a scheme to make a very large amount of money from the reactions they knew the story would create. It is likely that they would have made some effort to cover their tracks, and that seems all too easy to do. Did they ever catch the guys who had all those PUT options on the airlines just before 9/11?

[question everything]

15. Whatever happend to: if your mom tells you she loves you get a second confirmation?

We really cannot run a country, not to mention a global economy, by 140 (or whatever) characters.

I am not sure how useful those twits were even during the Boston hunt.

No, I don't have a "twiter" account, nor Facebook one, nor "Smartphone."

[Sunlei]

16. anybody depending on twitter for 'critical news' is a fool.