The spate of hacking that has riddled the tech news pages of late took a much more sensational turn today, as news broke of the assassination of President Barack Obama. Well, at least that was the story, but not exactly the truth.
A Twitter account belonging to household name and trusted source, Fox News, sent a series of tweets detailing the untimely demise of the 44th President of The United States on July 4th, American Independence Day.
The @foxnewspolitics feed stated: “BREAKING NEWS: @BarackObama assassinated, 2 gunshot wounds have proved too much.” Another post read: “@BarackObama has just passed. The President is dead.”
Followers of the Fox News Politics feed would have been forgiven for taking the comments at face value, as this particular account carries the blue “verified” tick icon, indicating that the feed belongs to who they claim to be. “Verified” markers are commonplace with celebrities, public figures and other organisations of note.
Over two hours after the hoax updates had appeared, they still hadn’t been removed. Responsibility for this act has been claimed by a group or individual calling themselves The Script Kiddies. In a statement, Jeff Misenti, vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital said: “We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts.”
It just goes to show, even with all of the conventional security settings in place, those determined enough will stop at nothing to gain access to and take control of your online content. If you’re worried about the preservation of what you have created over the months and years, why not create an offline backup on your own hard-drive?