‘Obama dead’ claims Fox News in Twitter hack

Fox News declared that Barack Obama had been assassinated this morning after one of the TV network's Twitter accounts was hacked. The attack happened early on July 4, Independence Day, and was blamed on a hacking group called The Script Kiddies.

They appeared to take control of the Foxnewspolitics feed at around 7am when a message appeared, which said: "Just regained full access to our Twitter and email. Happy 4th."

Soon afterwards another tweet announced: "@BarackObama has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July, indeed. President Barack Obama is dead."

Several other messages saying the same thing and adding details then appeared. It was claimed that he had been shot twice at an Iowa restaurant, in the pelvic area and the neck, and that the assassin was still on the loose. They were still on the site four hours after they first went up.

Foxnewspolitics is one of several feeds operated by the right-wing broadcaster. It is a 'verified account' with a blue tick, which means Twitter users can be sure that it is a genuine account rather than a fake one.

It has around 33,000 followers, but the tweets announcing the death of the president spread rapidly across the internet as other users of the site re-tweeted the message.

A member of The Script Kiddies, whose own Twitter account was suspended soon after the Fox attack, later gave a brief interview in which he said the organisation was close to the hacking group Anonymous and said: "We hope to be working with them soon."

The hacker added: "Fox News was selected because we figured their security would be just as much of a joke as their reporting."

The Script Kiddies' attack comes soon after another 'hacktivist' group LulzSec announced it was disbanding. Hackers are increasingly focusing their efforts on corporations and government departments with the twin aims of causing havoc for the fun of it and also uncovering and exposing information that they feel the public should have access to. ·