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A Twitter account belonging to Fox News was hacked yesterday; for several hours, it displayed faux news of President Obama's assassination. The hackers say they targeted the News Corp. (NASDAQ:NWSA) (ASX:NWS) cable news channel because they're against "corruption." In IT Blogwatch, bloggers feel a little less independent today.
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: In the future, everything is games...
Jeremy Kirk reports (phasers set to Stun):
The tweets were posted between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. Eastern Time by the "foxnewspolitics" account. ... The false tweets came on a major U.S. holiday, Independence Day. ... [The] tweets said that Obama had been shot twice...and that he later died from his wounds. ...
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Twitter typically moves quickly to delete tweets that come from hacked accounts...[but it] uses logins and passwords to allow access to accounts, which hackers have proved adept at stealing.
The obviously compromised account has more than 33,000 followers. Such hacks are often an attempt to trick surfers into visiting [malware] links for more information. ... No malware payload or links have yet appeared in this case, though. ...
It is unclear who pulled off the attack but it bears the hallmarks of an attack...possibly by a group of LulzSec wannabes. The timing of the hack...coincides with US Independence Day.
Sean Ludwig adds:
The hack highlights the continuing problem of online security for individuals and businesses from hackers. ... The now-defunct hacking group LulzSec and active hacking collective Anonymous have made headlines [recently] with attacks on U.S. Senate, CIA, Sonys PlayStation Network, and [online] games. ...
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Not only does the hack suggest that Fox News may not have selected a strong enough password,...it also means Twitters security process may not be robust enough.
Several hours after the débâcle, James Governor points out the elephant in the room:
Un****ingbelievable. @foxnewspolitics still hasn't deleted the Obama "assassination" tweets.
But Joe Wilcox wonders if anyone was actually fooled:
...[A]s a working journalist, I would be stunned that any news organization would disseminate such shocking news report in a...tweet. Fox News would want to...push readers to its site rather than to Twitter.
Meanwhile, Adam Peck talks to the alleged perps:
[It] seems to have less to do with their politics as it does with the fact that they represent corporate America. It will be a never ending battle, said the representative.
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...Fox News may not be out of the woods yet. The Script Kiddies suggested that todays Twitter hack was just the beginning. ... Ive looked into [Fox News's] security and site defacement does not seem to be an option. Everything else...is fair game.
