Twitter accounts belonging to the Associated Press were compromised earlier this week, resulting in fake news being tweeted that there had been an explosion at the White House. This incident is thought to be linked to a momentary dip in the global stock markets.

Normally a social media hijacking would be a Level One Event on the Gibson Index - relatively minor, as the scale goes up to Level Seven - but in this case, the incident was quite high profile and directly caused an effect on stock markets. This warrants an upgrade to a Level Two Attack.

Reports from ArsTechnica and TechCrunch indicate that the hijacking was preceded by a targetted phishing attack.

Related Links

• The AP: HOW A PHONY TWEET AND COMPUTER TRADES SANK STOCKS
• ArsTechnica: Hacked AP Twitter feed reporting fake White House attack rocks markets
• TechCrunch: AP Twitter Hack Preceded By A Phishing Attempt, News Org Says

Related Tweets

AP: Fake AP tweet comes after hackers made repeated attempts to steal the passwords of AP journalists.

— Michael van Poppel (@mpoppel) April 23, 2013

I kind of love that "doesn't adhere to AP style" is a way to determine the veracity of a tweet.

— Grace (@graceishuman) April 23, 2013

Scary: Brief Dow Jones plunge after bogus tweet from hacked AP twitter account: twitter.com/OwenCallan/sta…

— Sam Hananel (@SamHananelAP) April 23, 2013

It's a bit surprising that 12 hours after the hack, the Twitter account @ap is still suspended. Pic from last night. twitter.com/mikko/status/3…

— Mikko Hypponen ✘ (@mikko) April 24, 2013