Happy reality

Hacking the Twitter account of the Associated Press Agency once again reminded of the fragility of the parallel reality created by the “new media”, and in which there are millions of modern people. The reckoning for the speed of receipt of information inevitably becomes its reliability. Associated Press has been specializing in the operational receipt of news from the middle of the 19th century, and the company's Internet resources and, in particular, a microblog on Twitter-the front line of the struggle for urgency.

Thousands of journalists from different Internet publications around the world are watching the posts on the AP Twitter. They are used to trusting these messages. And when a post with the words Breaking , Obama and Injured appeared in Twitter's tape, at the first moment, many had a long -developed reflex to a sensation.

Of course, the agency on its other Internet resources, including on the Facebook social network, instantly reported that the microblog was hacked and the last notes could not be believed. A few minutes later the representative of the White House Jay Carney said that there were no explosions and everything was in order with Obama.

Nevertheless, in Russia, the “Urgent News” about two explosions in the American White House and the wound of Barack Obama, among others, published ITAR-TASS and “Echo of Moscow”. American markets responded to the message of hackers with a short-term attack of panic, and Dow Jones index for about an hour It decreased by 143 points from 14697 to 14554. Over the next 40 minutes, the exchange played the fall.

Shot: vesti.ru

AP quickly and radically neutralized the threat, blocking all the company's accounts on Twitter. Now AP security services and microblogging service are working to prevent a repetition of the situation. The agency’s official statement says that hacking occurred after "several attempts to abduct the passwords of employees."

The Associated Press journalist Mike Baker said on his twitter that the hacking occurred an hour after Fishing attack. According to him, many agency workers received an “skillfully faked letter” by e -mail. The blogs have already appeared that the message was disguised as the “internal message” of AP and contained a recommendation to read a certain “important article” of Reuters or Washington Post .

The network published a message from the Associated Press, which was sent at 12: 29, soon after the attack . “Some users received emails with reference to the news Reuters or Washington Post. This letter is part of a phishing attack, and the link leads to a fake site that requires your username and password. Users are recommended not to follow the link and not enter their data on this site. If you have already done this, then contact the support service immediately, ” the AP technical specialists, who are quoted by bloggers, said .

Responsibility for attacking the Syrian Electronic Army ( Syrian Electronic Army) is a group of computer crackers supporting the regime of Bashar Assad. The message about the "capture" of the Associated Press microblog, they posted on their twitter. Now their account is also blocked. The classmate colleagues from the Anonymous movement, apparently, approved this action: “Epic Lulz: Twitter AP got Syrian electronic army, ”their microblog said .

Syrian Electronic Army

Especially impressed by Internet users, the fall of the Dow Johns index, and they immediately began to imagine what could happen if hackers simultaneously receive control over the resources of several news agencies. This, by the way, is not such an incredible event. The last couple of years, cyber attacks on the sites of state institutions, the media and private companies have ceased to be rare. In just a few months, the Syrian Electronic Army alone managed to make a hacks of microblogs France-Press, Al-Jazeera, as well as Twitter and Facebook pages belonging Sky News Arabia.

Among the latest “achievements” of Internet hooligans supporting Assad are Twitters of the American CBS television company. Microblogs were attacked on Saturday on April 20 60 minute programs and 48 hours.

In addition, a month ago, the same organization took responsibility for the hacking of the twitter-accounts of the BBC Weather , which published news related to the weather and the climate, and the BBC Arabic Online. In microblogs, to which tens of thousands of people were signed, anti -American political slogans began to appear.

The FBI officers have already reported the start of the investigation on the fact of hacking the twitter AP, and lawyers again raised the question that in criminal legislation such hazardous antics should be equated with terrorist acts. At the same time, computer security experts are convinced that the problem of illegal access to accounts on Twitter should be done primarily by the state, but the administration of the blog platform.

The easiest way to protect microblogs is “two -factor authentication”, in which not only the login and password will be checked, but also the devices themselves (computers, tablets or smartphones) from which access to the account is made. The Twitter administration has already reported that it was being examined such an opportunity , but so far the decision has not yet been made.