On the eve of the New Year, reports surfaced that the hackers that targeted Sony Pictures Entertainment have changed their target, setting their sights on CNN, specifically the news network's lead political anchor Wolf Blitzer.
The FBI took the threat seriously. However, Examiner.com contributor David Garrett Jr. has stepped forward and claimed credit for the threat, saying it was just a joke.
Reports on the incident originated from The Intercept, where details of a bulletin by the FBI were posted. The bulletin cited that there were threats made against a certain media company. The Desk connected the FBI bulletin to a Pastebin post that included a threat against CNN, claiming to be from the hacking group that attacked Sony Pictures, the Guardians of Peace.
The Pastebin post included a link to a YouTube video and was concluded by the message "You have 24 hours to give us the Wolf," referring to CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.
As news of the threat spread, Garrett immediately attempted to prove that he was responsible for the fake threat through Facebook and Twitter.
"My fake pastebin post is being investigated by the FBI. I wrote for CNN to 'give us the Wolf' and the FBI is actually taking it as a threat," Garrett tweeted.
On a Facebook account named Don Cornelius, but contained Garrett's name in its URL, he explained that he took a message that CNN said the hackers uploaded to pastebin and replaced all mentions of FBI with CNN, adding the part about Wolf Blitzer at the end. He added that the news groups that propagated the threat as a real one just did not understand his humor.
On Garrett's other page on Facebook, this one containing his name, he posted a link to a Gawker article that turned his joke into a story of a real threat.
"There's no way to prove that Pastebin items like [the CNN threat] are actually from the hackers-in fact, there are plenty of reasons to suspect they're not," the article said, adding that the inclusion of the video and the mention of the Wolf made the threat look like a prank or a copycat.
As Garrett claims to be behind the threat and that it is just a joke, his admission leaves behind a trail of several news websites that were fooled by the fake threat.
"I'm the boy who cried Wolf," tweeted Garrett, as he acts to undo the impact of his joke.
