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False Tweet Causes Stock Market to Plunge

Apr 23, 2013  •  Post A Comment

Stock prices tumbled for a period of time today after a false tweet surfaced that had a wide impact. CBS News reports that the tweet referenced a non-existent bombing at the White House in which President Obama was supposedly injured.

The tweet appeared to come from the Associated Press, but was the result of hacking attack on the AP account.

“The Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 130 points, or roughly 1 percent, after the fake Twitter posting before quickly rebounding,” the report notes. “As of 1:50 p.m, it was up 130 points, or 0.9 percent, to 14,698. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also fell sharply, but recovered after AP confirmed that the tweets were false.”

Other media outlets reported that the tweet also created a drop in the value of the dollar, before it corrected itself.

“The tweet, which came shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern Time, claimed there had been two explosions at the White House and that President Barack Obama had been injured,” CBS News reported. “The AP’s mobile application also was compromised.”

The AP later released a statement saying: "The @AP twitter account has been hacked. The tweet about an attack at the White House is false. We will advise more as soon as possible."

The AP suspended its Twitter account and indicated it was working on fixing the problem. The company noted that unknown hackers have "made repeated attempts to steal the passwords of AP journalists," the report notes.

“Other media organizations have seen their Twitter accounts hacked in recent months,” the report adds. “Over the weekend, CBS News confirmed that its ‘60 Minutes’ and ‘48 Hours’ Twitter accounts were compromised.”

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