Over the weekend someone hacked a Fox News twitter feed and made some malicious posts:
A series of alarming Twitter posts about President Obama appeared on Fox News’s Twitter account for political news early Monday morning, and the Web site for the cable television network said it was a victim of hacking.
The Twitter account, @foxnewspolitics, one of many operated by Fox News, claimed that the president had been fatally shot while campaigning in Iowa, but gave no source for the news. On Monday morning, FoxNews.com first posted a brief statement saying that the reports were incorrect, and that it regretted “any distress the false Tweets may have created.”
First off, this is an absolutely horrible joke. I don’t care who is in the White House, making false claims that the President of the United States has been assassinated is absolutely horrible and the Secret Service even thinks so, as they have now launched a full investigation.
Fox does seem set on blaming Twitter for the hack:
“We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts,” said Jeff Misenti, vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital.
I have spent over a quarter century in the computer industry and done a lot of work on security. 99% of the time when something like this occurs, it’s generally the fault of the user and not the service. Has Fox checked their computers for viruses, key loggers, trojans, etc.? How secure is their password? Given the enormous popularity of Twitter, it’s idiotic to think that this was a vulnerability on Twitter’s fault. If that were the case then we would see a lot more of these hacks on a lot bigger targets.
But after the initial shock of this story and the poor joke, plus the passing of the blame, something else has come to mind – a Murdoch owned company is now on the other side of hacking. If you aren’t clear on what I’m saying, then check out this news from today:
British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned on Tuesday the alleged hacking of a murdered schoolgirl’s voicemail by the News of the World, part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, as the scandal closed in on a top executive and Murdoch protegee.
Cameron has so far said little on a long-running phone hacking scandal, in which the newspaper admitted some of its staff listened to cellphone messages of public figures.
It has gathered more steam as his government weighs approval of a controversial takeover of broadcaster BSkyB by Murdoch’s News Corp .
But new suggestions that the paper might have also hampered police and added to the torment of the family by hacking the voicemails of a 13-year-old abducted in 2002 have caused uproar in Britain and moved Cameron to comment.
This is just the latest in an ongoing saga of a Murdoch owned tabloid being involved in illegal hacking and has even sparked an investigation by U.K. authorities and Scottland Yard. As matter of fact, the tabloid has already admitted previously hacking cell phones. To make matters worse, News Corps. execs are saying they are “shocked” over the latest allegations, yet they continued to employ the people who already admitted to the previous hacks.
What’s “shocking” is that the biggest media company in the world continues to employ people after they admitted to these crimes. I believe it’s time for some higher-ups at News Corp to end up behind bars for allowing this to continue. If someone hacked Murdoch’s cellphone or email, you can be damn sure he would be out for blood. That is obvious by Fox being so upset over their Twitter feed being hacked, while other companies owned by their boss engage in the very same activities.
Maybe it’s time for old Rupert Murdoch to take a stand against hacking. He can denounce the Twitter hack while firing some of this executives and anyone else involved in their own hacking.
Sadly, I don’t think that will be happening.