AP Gets Twitter Hacked, Reports Explosions At White House

At 1:07pm ET Tuesday, the Associated Press told its nearly 2 million Twitter followers that there had been two explosions at the White House and President Obama was “injured.” The message had been retweeted over 2,500 times in approximately five minutes before the account was suspended. Fortunately, this was just another high-profile Twitter hacking incident.

AP writer Sam Hananel was one of the first to confirm the hacking, asking readers to “please ignore” the tweet about the explosions.

A similarly alarming episode happened just before the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in 2011 when NBC News’ Twitter account started reporting on a highjacked plane.

UPDATE (1:35pm ET): The Wall Street Journal‘s Charles Fourelle noted the market’s frightening reaction to the AP’s fake tweet:

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