After being down for over 20 hours following a hack, the Associated Press’ Twitter account is now back up and running.
“Thank you for your patience,” tweeted the @AP account early Wednesday morning.
Yesterday, around 1 pm ET, the @AP Twitter account tweeted: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” This was quickly confirmed by other AP Twitter accounts as well as AP employees to be bogus, and the AP soon confrimed that it had fallen victim to a hack.Following the hack, the Syrian Electronic Army took credit for it on Twitter. That main account has since been suspended. The FBI is conducting a full investigation into the incident.
The @ap Twitter account, which was suspended after being hacked, has been secured and is back up. Thank you for your patience. – @ericcarvin
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 24, 2013
Although the tweet was identified as fake in a matter of minutes, it had a terrifying effect on the stock market. After the false tweet claiming a White House explosion was sent, the Dow Jones industrial average sharply dropped 143 points. It quickly recovered.
But it just goes to show how powerful a tweet from the AP can be – really any high-profile tweet in general. What would happen if the next hacked tweet said something that was a little harder to disprove in a matter of minutes?