Peter Romar, one of the FBI’s most wanted hackers has been captured and plead guilty to federal charges. One of the points from the article that really made me pause was what Romar did with two accomplices. In March of 2016, Romar hacked the Associated Press Twitter account and posted that the White House had been bombed and President Obama was injured. This posting caused a temporary dip in the stock market.
It’s so very scary that the hacking of a Twitter account could cause such a ripple through the financial system. Scarier yet is the fact that, like lambs, we take as Truth what the news media reports, and whatever else we read online. A dip in the stock market, just off the posting that the White House was bombed. Very scary to think what a coordinate attack, that posted the same information on multiple sites would do! Would people then believe it? How long could the charade go on?
Knowledge is power, but it seems like Social Media is giving it a run for it’s money!
Yeah its seriously astonishing that it is active since a long time .In 2011, the group targeted multiple entities including The Associated Press, Reuters, Microsoft, Harvard University, CNN, National Public Radio and Human Rights Watch among others .
In case many people don’t realize, this is the sort of unfortunate outcome a simple twitter account hack can produce. I say unfortunate, but this could easily be escalated to catastrophic had multiples major news outlets were hack simultaneously to post something like this. Yes, people would eventually realize the news isn’t real; however, it would have caused preliminary and long lasting impacts on the financial market alone.