Fox News tweets hacked to show Obama death stories

A Twitter account maintained by Fox News has been hacked to post fake "Obama assassinated" stories. The @foxnewspolitics account was seized to post a succession of bogus updates (example below) on the false story that Obama was shot and killed while supposedly campaigning at a Ross' restaurant in Iowa. The obviously …

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe no hack?

Perhaps some kind of internal Fox 'to do' list accidentally being tweeted?

[Winkypop]

Is that the truth....

....or did you see it on Fox?

[The BigYin]

How do these hacks work?

Surely after n-failed logins, the account gets locked and needs re-activating? (where n < 5)

[Rob - Denmark]

Just guessing

Here's how tey COULD do it:

If n<5:

Try four times. Wait for the user to login (=post to Twitter), thus resetting the counter. Try four times. Repeat.

OR IF the user don't login, wait an hour (counter is reset after an hour according to http://support.twitter.com/entries/63510-i-m-locked-out-after-too-many-login-attempts) before trying four times again.

But, more likely, they've used a social hack or someone re-used the same password on other sites.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, only 33,000 followers?

That's a pretty shabby showing for the leading voice of conservative America.

Or maybe conservative America's not quite smart enough to work out how to get on the Intertwit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Derp

Or maybe Fox isn't the leading voice of conservative America? It certainly isn't the only one, last I checked.

[Anonymous Coward]

An explination

Fox New's main demographic is grumpy old people who think that nothing good has happened to America since 1960 (except for Ronald Reagan of course).

And you know how good old people are with technology.

[Adrian Jones]

Given the usual standard of Fox reporting

Maybe it wasn't a hack.

[hammarbtyp]

Must of been a hack

They used sad, death and Obama on the same page of a Fox news website

[Wize]

If anything happens to him later today...

...it will blow the mind of conspiracy theorists.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's a sad 4th for America"

Meanwhile at Fox, the parties started almost immediately.

[Tom 35]

Hack?

Sounds more like someone at Fox just posted their wet dream.

If it had been a hack I expect it would be more like...

Sarah Palin died after choking on a weiner.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sarah Palin died after choking on a weiner."

More like: Sarah Palin dies in freak accident. Linda Lovelace impression blamed.

[Kay Burley ate my hamster]

No Hack

If it were a hack it would have been more positive.

[cdilla]

Cool

Nice to see El Reg doing its bit to cement the reputation of LulzSec by acknowledging there is a "LulzSec wannabe" demograpahic out there.

Unexpected, but good on you all the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the official twitter account

That's not their official twitter account. Someone has just created a twitter account, themed it to match and built up followers. Then you guys have written articles on it. lmao and its not even April 1st

[GatesFanbois]

title

Wrong. It is an official Fox twitter account, they have several and this one has a "verified" icon. Guess the fail belongs to you.

[Smarty Pants]

Frpom BBC Site

Fox News Politics is one of the Twitter accounts associated with the industry-leading cable news network.

Its Twitter account carries the "verified" tick icon, indicating that the feed belongs to the organisation it claims to be.

[Martin 66]

Twitter security

I set up a twitter account on my Blackberry, with a reasonable complex password on Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon, my account was spamming tweets without my knowledge advertising "make $$$$'s" websites. Clearly something not right with the security model here.

[NoneSuch]

Not a smart idea...

Making death threats against POTUS is a Federal offense. Now the Secret Service techies will be on their case and unlike the FBI those lads know their arse from their elbow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagining the death of != making death threats

However, 'imagining the death' of the american president isn't. Unlike of our sovereign, under the Treason Act 1351...

[ratfox]

Doubt it

During the last days in office of the previous President, GWB or GBH or GHB or something, The Onion frequently reported his death in a freak accident.

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Sir

Can someone tell me what twitter is? Every time I hear the name I just think of compromised/compromising publicly available private information and run a mile.

I don't think I could even bring myself to Google it.

[Dr Trevor Marshall]

My Twitter account was hacked - here's how they did it

On 14th April I stayed at the Miyako hotel in Los Angeles. I connected to WiFi (hotel had an open network) and accessed twitter. Didn't post anything, but my cookie was apparently transferred in any case. A few minutes later a tweet went out from my Twitter feed with a malicious URL in it.

Even simpler to do with the new automated android tool :( So I now have a VPN I use when on the road (SSHtunnel) , and have set Twitter to https by default. No harm done (thank goodness), and it was a great wake-up call for me. They could really have sniffed some good login credentials from me, had their bot been looking more efficiently...

[DJ]

Umm..

Dear Dr.

I do hope you are not a proctologist.

Cheers.