US news agency's twitter account hacked

President Obama is fine;  White House spokesman Jay Carney

The Associated Press has said its Twitter account has been hacked, after the posting of a bogus post about explosions at the White House.

The news agency's account was suspended and it has advised all tweets should be ignored until further notice.

The false message said: "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured."

US markets were spooked by the tweet; the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 150 points as it was retweeted.

On Tuesday evening, the FBI said it was investigating the incident.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters soon after the tweet was published that President Obama was fine, and financial markets quickly recovered the lost ground.

AP said later: "The @AP twitter account has been hacked. The tweet about an attack at the White House is false."

The agency said the attack came after repeated attempts by hackers to steal the passwords of AP journalists, adding that it was working to correct the issue.

Spokesman Paul Colford said the wire service had disabled other Twitter accounts following the attack and was working with the microblogging site to investigate the breach.

On Tuesday evening, Twitter said it was investigating the incident and reminded users to be "extra vigilant" about phishing emails.
Source: BBC Posted by Unknown 4/24/2013