Hackers spooked markets Tuesday after breaking into the Associated Press’s Twitter account and falsely reporting President Barack Obama had been injured after two blasts at the White House. A brief alert on the news agency’s @AP account read: “Breaking: Two explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured. “Almost immediately the wire service posted via its corporate communications feed that its @AP Twitter account had been hacked, before promptly suspending the service. “Advisory: @AP Twitter account has been hacked. Tweet about an attack at the White House is false. We will advise more as soon as possible,” @AP_CorpComm posted. White House spokesman Jay Carney later told reporters the president was unharmed. “I can say that the president is fine,” Carney said shortly after the fake tweet. “I was just with him. “Stock markets plunged just as the report came out, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 130 points, or 0.9 percent, and the S&P 500 dropping 12 points, or 0.8 percent. Just as quickly they rebounded to where they were before the tweet, all within three or four minutes. Online activists backing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad later claimed responsibility for the hack. The post was later deleted.
