The New York Post confirmed that some of its Twitter accounts were hacked on Friday after a series of fake breaking news tweets were posted.
"Some New York Post Twitter accounts were briefly hacked and the matter is being investigated," the Post said in a statement.
Our Twitter account was briefly hacked and we are investigating.
— New York Post (@nypost) January 16, 2015
The inaccurate posts include a tweet about China firing missiles on a U.S. Navy ship and that the Federal Reserve would be making an emergency announcement regarding interest rates.
One tweet read "#BREAKING: Chinese anti-ship missile fired at USS George Washington."
"BREAKING: Federal Reserve head Yellen announces bail-in in emergency meeting, rumored negative rate to be set at 4pm EST today," the other false post said. A similar tweet was also posted on The New York Post Business account's Twitter feed.
"Give the hackers this much credit, the George Washington is our permanent Pacific based carrier. They at least did their homework." John Noonan, spokesman for House Armed Services committee tweeted.
Similar tweets were also posted on the United Press International Twitter account. The UPI's account also claimed that Pope Francis had declared World War III.
The tweets were deleted soon after being posted on, and the hackers behind the attack are unknown.
The Twitter hack comes after several hacks to government networks, websites and social media pages. The U.S. Central Command's YouTube and Twitter accounts were hacked earlier in the week, which featured messages supporting the Islamic State.
"AMERICAN SOLDIERS, WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK. ISIS," hackers tweeted on the US CENTCOM feed on Monday as President Obama address cyber security. "We won't stop! We know everything about you, your wives and children,''another tweet said with a spreadsheet of addresses and emails of Defense Department workers.
While the Twitter hackers identities remain unknown at this time, it seems like the hack was targeted. In light of the recent hacks, ISIS could be behind the attack, but this is just speculation.
[Photo Credit: hackNY.org/Flickr]
