Hijacked Fox News Twitter Account Falsely Claims Obama Shot Dead

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.'"

nt

[shentino]

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

Re:HOW?

[mrsurb]

Their owner, being Australian, has somehow confused American Independence Day with April Fool's Day... given the mix of stupidity and false patriotism Fox broadcasts, it wouldn't surprise me if he considered the two days one and the same.

FORMER Australian, thank you. We're glad to be rid of him. You wanted him (and gave him citizenship), you've got him.

Official Fox News reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Not even trying, are we?

[amiga3D]

So true. That's one stroke of genius by President Obama. By selecting Biden for VP he made sure even the KKK pray for the health of the President every night.

Re:HOW?

[RMingin]

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.