The false tweets posted by the hackers, were sent to the Associated Press's two million followers, caused pure chaos in almost every United States markets causing a plunge in trading or freefall. This happened just three minutes after the false tweets were sent.
The group Syrian Electronic Army, tweeted on their Twitter account that they are responsible for this hack.
Last year, the Twitter accounts of popular news organizations Reuters (@ReutersTech), National Public Radio, BBC and CBS's "60 Minutes" were hacked. Twitter said it would have implemented a "two-factor authentication" process that would make it impossible for anyone to hack into an account, even if they acquired the password. But, we have not seen this form of authentication rolled out after it was announced almost three months ago.
Twitter announced this "two-factor authentication" process in February after 250,000 of its users' accounts were hacked and they had to reset the passwords for these accounts.
Click here to read more about the Associated Press (AP) hack at www.reuters.com.