AP Twitter Hacked, Sends False Tweet of Explosions at White House
The AP has confirmed that their Twitter feed was hacked this afternoon, sending an alarming tweet at 1:07 p.m. ET that falsely reported two explosions at the White House and that the president was injured.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters shortly after the Twitter post that "the president is fine" and there were no explosions. Major stock market averages plunged briefly on the false report but recovered in positive territory.
AP's Media Relations team and Washington employees disclosed the account's breach within ten minutes of the hack. The account has been suspended, the AP said.
That is a bogus @ ap tweet.
— AP CorpComm (@AP_CorpComm) April 23, 2013
Please Ignore AP Tweet on explosions, we've been hacked.
— Sam Hananel (@SamHananelAP) April 23, 2013
After 15 minutes and about 4,000 retweets, the account was suspended by Twitter. The high-profile news account, followed by almost 2 million, joins CBS's "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" after those accounts were hacked this week.