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BY KATIE BRENNAN
ANCHOR CHRISTY LEWIS
You're watching multisource technology news analysis from Newsy.
The Script Kiddies have struck again. The group responsible for hacking Fox News’ Twitter account in July struck NBC’s on Friday. AdWeek has the details.
“Late Friday, the NBC account posted several ‘breaking news’ messages claiming that the site of the Sept. 11 attacks were being attacked again..”
The messages were taken down within minutes -- but Business Insider has the first message, which read:
"Breaking News! Ground Zero has just been attacked. Flight 5736 has crashed into the site, suspected hijacking. more as the story develops."
Two more bogus tweets confirmed the attacks, claiming “This is not a joke.” But only a few minutes later a final message appeared -- where the culprits came clean. HLN has the details.
“A group calling itself the script kiddies claimed responsibility for the hacking. The same group is suspected in a similar incident in July -- that’s when a false report that president Obama was killed ended up on Fox News’s twitter account.”
The group claims to work closely with an infamous hacker group called Anonymous -- which has taken down online services run by Amazon and Visa. Online student magazine Think interviewed a representative from the “Script Kiddies” in July. He told the magazine:
“‘I would consider us to be close in relation [to Anonymous], 2 of the members of our group were members of Anonymous... I was a member of Anonymous. We hope to be working with them soon.’”
One Twitter user praised NBC’s swift action. New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter tweeted:
“When a Fox account was hacked in July, it was kept online (overnight) for hours. When @nbcnews was hit today, it was suspended in minutes.”
LA Times Blogger Kate O’Hare admits NBC rectified the situation faster than Fox did, but says that’s not much of a surprise -- The Script Kiddies hacked Fox News Politics' account on July 4th.
“Likely owing to the timing of the attack -- which began at 2 a.m. Eastern -- on a national holiday, it was several hours before Twitter could return control of the account to its owner.
As Stelter mentioned, Twitter was able to rectify the situation at @NBCNews much more quickly, although he seems to imply that the length of the first hack was somehow FNC's fault.”
According to MSNBC, NBC News social media director Ryan Osborn said he recently received a suspicious email that may have something to do with the hacking.
“The email came from an unknown sender with the subject ‘Hurricane Alert’ and the message: ‘Ryan, You need to get off TWITTER immediately and protect your family from the hurricane. That is an order.’”
NBC issued an apology for the hoax. The FBI is investigating the the hacking. Bureau officials say they are gathering information and will not identify any suspects.
Transcript by Newsy
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