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Twitter Government The Media United States Politics

Hijacked Fox News Twitter Account Falsely Claims Obama Shot Dead 290

Frankie70 writes with word of a Twitter-account hijacking that's raised eyebrows today, supplying a link to the account in question. From the Telegraph's account: "'The Twitter account of the American Fox News Politics team was compromised and used to falsely announce the death of the U.S. president. Hackers, who identified themselves as 'The Script Kiddies' and said they shared the spirit of prominent hacking group Anonymous, used the account to write: 'BREAKING NEWS: President @BarackObama assassinated, 2 gunshot wounds have proved too much. It's a sad 4th for #america. #obamadead RIP.'"
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Hijacked Fox News Twitter Account Falsely Claims Obama Shot Dead

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  • HOW? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sortius_nod ( 1080919 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @08:13AM (#36651666) Homepage

    This is your corporate account. How does this happen?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by waddgodd ( 34934 )

      This is your corporate account. How does this happen?

      I suggest it didn't. They just had to really quickly gin up a "hacker group" to cover their sick joke

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        This is your corporate account. How does this happen?

        I suggest it didn't. They just had to really quickly gin up a "hacker group" to cover their sick joke

        It's sad, but what you said rings more true than anything that so-called news organisation comes out with....

    • Re:HOW? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Inda ( 580031 ) <slash.20.inda@spamgourmet.com> on Monday July 04, 2011 @08:25AM (#36651708) Journal
      Hello Mr Corporate Account User, I'm from the password police and I need to inspect your password!

      I joke around here that this month's password is July2011 as it passes all the company's password requirements (1 upper, 2 digits, +7 length). I know for a fact that the boss uses it and 10 quid says others do too.

      Listen to the IT Expert (moi?) when he's having a bad day? You may as well play with matches.
      • Re:HOW? (Score:5, Informative)

        by RMingin ( 985478 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @11:41AM (#36653522) Homepage
        Entertainingly, that's exactly how I'm selecting my password at work currently. The one system expires my password every month, and demands upper, lower, and number. Last month was June2011, before that May20112011 (eight char minimum), and April2011. These are atrocious and horrible passwords, but I fed it good ones like g0g0g4dg3tp4$$w0rd until I couldn't remember them anymore, That and the one time I got PUNISHED, PUBLICLY, for forgetting the horrible new password I'd been required to choose.....

        If you're going to implement password cycling, keep it reasonable. The system I access has nothing more sensitive than the last four digits of a credit card number. We really don't need monthly cycling unless we're dealing with something really secure.
        • Solution?

          *) Choose a master password.
          *) Never forget it, never disclose it
          *) Concatenate it with "MonthYYYY"
          *) Calculate its SHA1 in base 64
          *) Ensure that the 8 first chars contain upper, lower, number. If not, concatenate i+=1 to the master password and keep hashing

          It looks like this In Ruby: http://www.pastie.org/2163871 [pastie.org]
          An example with P4SSW0RD as master password gives : OWRhNGE5

      • At bare minimum that really ought to be 1 upper, 2 digits, 7+ length and no words. And that's an extremely low standard at this point given the state of affairs these days. It always bothers me when sites require me to use no more than 16 characters. It's not realistic to expect people to memorize all these unique passwords so you may as well require them to use a 30 character password.

    • Re:HOW? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RevWaldo ( 1186281 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @09:01AM (#36651904)
      Words go in, tweets come out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that.

      .
    • Password = 12345
      Thats the same as my luggage!

  • nt (Score:4, Informative)

    by shentino ( 1139071 ) <shentino@gmail.com> on Monday July 04, 2011 @08:13AM (#36651668)

    In all fairness, Fox News did claim (accidentally) that the president was dead in Afghanistan.

  • by imadork ( 226897 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @08:19AM (#36651682) Homepage
    until I see the long form death certificate....
  • Why (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04, 2011 @08:20AM (#36651686)

    what's the point of hacking fox news to spread disinformation? Just leave them alone and they will do it by themselves.

    • If they were really in it for the lulz they'd be posting accurate information. Such as admitting that Bush didn't win the 2000 Presidential election,

  • by bigjarom ( 950328 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @08:31AM (#36651744) Journal
    I don't understand why these tweets have not yet been deleted 6-7 hours after they were posted. Does Fox News not know you can delete tweets?
    • by gclef ( 96311 )

      Probably because they haven't (yet) regained control of the account. Given that it's the 4th of July, I suspect a lot of organisations (Twitter included) are on skeleton crews today. If Fox News calls in a huff demanding an account password is changed immediately, how's the crew to know if this is real or another layer of social engineering? All the higher-ups who would make any decision like that are just now waking up & planning their day of grilling.

    • Maybe whoever gained access to the account also changed the password?

    • This reminds me of the Mark Foley incident where he was repeatedly labeled as a Democrat during a show, and that show was re-run three times at least before the text was edited out (without explanation). Just like with Twitter content, Fox News probably didn't know that it could edit video content either.

  • false flag! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Titan1080 ( 1328519 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @08:39AM (#36651792)
    Every one of these 'hacker' news stories brings us one step closer to an internet kill switch. The government knows that the riots will begin soon in the US, and they are trying to set things up to make it hard to communicate. Beware.
    • I would much prefer that the hackers be hunted down and have their Kill Switch flipped...with the help of an HK416.

    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      You think big media doesn't want an internet kill switch? You should only be viewing authorized content which you have paid for, and which is generating suitable ad revenue.
    • by Lunix Nutcase ( 1092239 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @10:00AM (#36652288)

      So the government is unable to prevent people leaking sensitive diplomatic cables and embarrassing videos and documents yet they can pull off massive false flag operations without a single person leaking the fact that it's a government operation? Umm, yeah right.

      • So the government is unable to prevent people leaking sensitive diplomatic cables and embarrassing videos and documents yet they can pull off massive false flag operations without a single person leaking the fact that it's a government operation? Umm, yeah right.

        It doesn't require the government to carry out a false flag. It could easily be a single person at Fox News who has the password, goes to the library, posts the fake information and claims it was a hacker.

      • Or maybe it's all just part of an even bigger false flag operation! Maybe their apparent ineptitude is just a show to make it seem like they couldn't possibly pull off something of this magnitude...
    • by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @11:21AM (#36653272) Homepage

      The government knows that the riots will begin soon in the US, and they are trying to set things up to make it hard to communicate. Beware.

      Of course the most insidious part of the government's plan was the pre-planting of paranoid conspiracy theories on all the major tech sites, so that when the time came, the Internet's system operators would turn on each other in a ferocious bloodbath of nerd terror.

    • There's nothing to riot about, yet. The current situation is a day at the beach compared to the Great Depression, and the public are divided between the two Parties so everyone has a plump affirming cawk to suckle on.
      USians are vocal, but they are too cozy and stupid to change anything, and more important they no longer have any idea about what to change other than breaking government (not a bad experiment).

  • by Anonymous Coward

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/04/foxnewspolitics-twitter-feed-hacked/

  • ... is optional 2-factor authentication.

    @foxnewspolitics (the account in question) only has 33k followers but other prominent accounts have many more. A quick check shows @foxnews has 3/7 million and CNN has over 2 million. The ability to spread news to millions of people NEEDS to have more than just a single password.

    • by sootman ( 158191 )

      Sorry for the typo. @foxnews has 3/4 million followers, not 3/7. :-)

    • "You may have heard of recent incidents involving compromised accounts on major Web sites, including Twitter. To strengthen the integrity of our systems and accounts and ensure compliance with Federal cybersecurity laws and recommendations, we at Twitter are now instituting a stronger authentication system. In order to continue posting after 11:59:59 PM 2011-07-04, we require your full name, address, Social Security Number (SSN), Date of Birth (DOB), and valid US credit card information. Click Here [example.com] to ve

  • by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @09:07AM (#36651934) Homepage Journal

    no problem, we'll just attach more strings...

  • by Anonymous Coward

    When content falsely attributed to LulzSec started showing up on Pastebin, and their response was essentially "it's not real unless we tweet it", I really, *really* wanted someone to crack their Twitter account. A Twitter credentials dump could lead to some some serious lulz.

  • by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @09:13AM (#36651960) Homepage Journal
    Come on kids, everyone knows the only real way to get back at an evil media mogul is to broadcast him on his own channel saying that his viewers mean as much to him as a festering bowl of dog snot does. Bonus points if you get the reference.
    • Come on kids, everyone knows the only real way to get back at an evil media mogul is to broadcast him on his own channel saying that his viewers mean as much to him as a festering bowl of dog snot does. Bonus points if you get the reference.

      Sorry, but Philo already returned to his home planet. We'd need some way to broadcast it other than U62.

      And we don't have Stanley's mop handy.

    • by Arkhan ( 240130 )

      God I loved UHF. I wish Weird Al would make another movie.

  • by Dracos ( 107777 ) on Monday July 04, 2011 @10:15AM (#36652388)

    Why would someone "hack" a Fox news twitter account and promptly announce something that the followers of that account would cheer at, or at least be mildly glad of it? Why Tweet something huge like that?

    Everything about the Tweet that was sent screams immature and/or amateur, but the content of it hints at some twisted intent that no real hackers would have.

    "The Script Kiddies"? Come the fuck on.

    If I were going to hack a Fox Twitter account, I'd send a message that was contrary to Fox's agenda. Something like "Boehner, Cantor, McConnell found performing gay satanic ritual in Capitol basement. Nervous goats on scene, US flags burning."

    • by Caraig ( 186934 ) *

      As a social experiment. How many people will re-tweet this (and with what levels of anonymity-fueled ebullience) without checking sources? As recently as ten minutes ago someone re-tweeted this as if it were true.

      Extra bonus points if any so-called "news" outlet -- radio, television, or internet -- actually reported this as true.

      Of course, for some, 'social experiment' is the excuse. It's really for the lulz.

    • by LocalH ( 28506 )

      It's gross misrepresentation and tantamount to blanket libel to write that followers of a certain account, by definition, wish to see the President dead.

      • It's ... tantamount to blanket libel to write that followers of a certain account, by definition, wish to see the President dead.

        is that what the Fox legal team said? why would you repeat corporate rubbish? at least put a smiley face on that noise or you might confuse the less evolved

  • I just received mod points and I was torn on whether to mod a comment up for a sentiment I agree with regarding this topic, or to post myself. I don't really want to mod down those I disagree with, I would like to. but I will be satisfied if their score remained 0. I understand the diversity in political opinions, and realize people's opinions of this will cover the spectrum, myself included, however I think a lot of these opinions lack objectivity. I understand Fox is a right leaning news org, and most o

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