At 2 a.m. ET Monday, hackers accessed FoxNews.com’s twitter feed for political news, @FoxNewsPolitics, and posted false tweets announcing that U.S. President Barack Obama had been assassinated.
A total of six false tweets reporting the assassination were posted, and remained on FoxNews.com’s twitter feed for several hours. One tweet stated Obama had been “shot twice at a Ross’ restaurant in Iowa while campaigning”, while another said “It’s a sad 4th of July…The shooter will be found.”
In an attempt to help spread the false reports, Hackers encouraged followers to re-tweet the messages through their own accounts, and many users obliged.
FoxNews.com notified the Secret Service of the hacking and the fictitious tweets, and apologized for any distress the incident may have created. In a statement on their website, FoxNews publicly confirmed the hack, announcing “Hackers sent out several malicious and false tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated. Those reports were incorrect, of course, and the president was spending the July 4 holiday with his family at the White House.”
According to Jeff Misenti, Fox News Digital’s vice president and general manager, FoxNews.com has requested a “detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts.”