Today, a hacker broke into a Fox News Twitter account. With his unfettered access, the hacker tweeted that President Obama had been assassinated. The hacked Fox News account, @FoxNewspolitics, which usually tweets political news, was compromised at some point in the early hours of the morning, but didn’t apologize, delete or correct the posts until just recently. In fact, in the last few minutes, Fox News’ @FoxNewspolitics handle deleted the hacker’s posts and tweeted a link to a statement about the incident that was released earlier by Fox News. The statement confirmed that hackers were able to publish “several malicious and false tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated.”
Fox News or any other organization that has been hacked has the ability to delete tweets sent from it’s account. Twitter has even posted instructions for people who run into this sort of issue and need to quickly delete their tweets. According to the Twitter help center, a person should perform the following actions to delete a post: “Log in to Twitter. Visit your profile page. Locate the Tweet you want to delete. Hover your mouse over the message [...] and click the ‘Delete’ option that appears.”
However, Fox News’ decision not to delete the hacker’s posts for nearly eight hours after the last tweet was sent out, let those who were curious reread the tweets on @FoxNewspolitics’ news feed. The first tweet about Obama’s death said “@BarackObama has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July, indeed. President Barack Obama is dead.” The last of the hacker’s tweets said “we wish @joebiden the best of luck as our new President of the United States. In such a time of madness, there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
Soon after the initial tweets, it was determined that Obama was alive and well and enjoying the 4th of July festivities with his family at the White House. However, as a precaution, Fox News informed the Secret Service about the incident. Fox News Digital’s Vice President Jeff Misenti said that “we will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts.” Twitter hasn’t responded directly to this comment.
Obama will soon be tweeting using the initials “BO.” Will Obama reconsider this decision after one of Fox News’ Twitter accounts was hacked?
Fox News or any other organization that has been hacked has the ability to delete tweets sent from it’s account. Twitter has even posted instructions for people who run into this sort of issue and need to quickly delete their tweets. According to the Twitter help center, a person should perform the following actions to delete a post: “Log in to Twitter. Visit your profile page. Locate the Tweet you want to delete. Hover your mouse over the message [...] and click the ‘Delete’ option that appears.”
Soon after the initial tweets, it was determined that Obama was alive and well and enjoying the 4th of July festivities with his family at the White House. However, as a precaution, Fox News informed the Secret Service about the incident. Fox News Digital’s Vice President Jeff Misenti said that “we will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts.” Twitter hasn’t responded directly to this comment.
Obama will soon be tweeting using the initials “BO.” Will Obama reconsider this decision after one of Fox News’ Twitter accounts was hacked?
