January 16, 2015

BuzzFeed | UPI | Mashable

On Friday, Twitter accounts for both UPI and the New York Post were hacked, BuzzFeed’s Ellie Hall and Nicolás Medina Mora reported.

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UPI reported on the attack on Friday.

It started on Twitter, where six fake headlines were posted in about 10 minutes, starting about 1:20 p.m. Some of them were about the Federal Reserve; others contained a false report that the USS George Washington had been attacked.

So it’s not the start of World War III, as Mashable’s Brian Ries reported. Here are five other times that the Twitter accounts of news organizations have been hacked.

Wall Street Journal

On May 6 of last year, four Wall Street Journal Twitter accounts were hacked.

CNN

On Jan. 23, CNN was hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army. CNN tweeted about it after.

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Associated Press

The AP was hacked on April 23 of 2013 by the SEA.

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NPR

On April 15, 2013, NPR was hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army. Mark Memmott reported that after the attack, SEA offered a bit of explanation, including “you can ask @deborahamos.”

AFP

Agence France-Presse’s photo Twitter account was hacked on Feb. 25 of 2013.

“Any documents or images posted on this account after 17:45 [Central European Time] are NOT from AFP.”

Poynter’s Twitter account had something like a hack last year. In January, Poynter and other media organizations tweeted “f gwenifill”

Slate put together a pretty good Storify of how it all happened.

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Kristen Hare teaches local journalists the critical skills they need to serve and cover their communities as Poynter's local news faculty member. Before joining faculty…
Kristen Hare

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