Hackers breached the Twitter accounts of the New York Post and UPI, posting false claims that World War III had started and a U.S. aircraft carrier was damaged by China. Security expert Robert Siciliano says phishing attacks targeting employees are the typical entry point, and recommends antivirus software and VPNs to protect against similar breaches.
Hackers strike again, this time briefly taking over the Twitter accounts of two major media outlets. Fox 5's Sharon Crowley in the newsroom with the tweets that definitely caught everyone's attention earlier today.
Sharon, certainly that's right, Steve. The New York Post and UPI, the targets this time of hackers. The tweets were— the false tweets, I should say— were quickly taken down. The New York Post said, our Twitter account was briefly hacked and we are investigating. And also UPI posted another tweet saying that the UPI had been hacked and we are urgently working to resolve this issue with support. Here's what happened. The tweets claimed things that are not true. One of the false tweets said World War III had begun with a picture of the Pope on it. Hackers also posted another untrue tweet. It read, "USS George Washington damaged. US Navy now engaged in active combat against Chinese vessels in the South China Sea." Another false tweet posted claimed Chinese anti-ship missile fired at USS George Washington. Online security expert Robert Siciliano Robert Siciliano with Hotspot Shield says it will be very difficult to catch these hackers.
When an account like this is hacked, usually it's as a result of a phishing email. That means that an employee on the inside of the organization probably got an email from a criminal and they ultimately provided that bad guy their username and password to get access to the account. So right now the best thing to do is to make sure that your devices are properly protected with antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-phishing, a firewall. Make sure your wireless connection to the internet is locked down with encryption. If you're on free public Wi-Fi, one of my clients is called Hotspot Shield. They're a VPN that locks down all of your wireless connections to the internet.
And as we said, those tweets were quickly taken down, not too much damage done. But Allison, you'll remember when the AP was hacked recently, the stock market dropped more than 100 points. A lot of people lost a lot of money that day. I'll send it back to you.
