History and stories
The fake tweet that briefly crashed the stock market
The post came from one of the most trusted news accounts in the world. It was false, and the account had been taken over.
1 min readStory
The short version
In April 2013, a false post from the Associated Press account claimed explosions at the White House. Markets dropped within minutes.
The story
On April 23, 2013, the Associated Press Twitter account posted that there had been explosions at the White House and that President Barack Obama was injured.
None of it was true. A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army had taken over the account. The group had already been breaking into news organizations’ social media accounts to post its own messages.
Automated trading systems and human traders reacted to the headline within moments. US stock indexes fell sharply before recovering when the AP and the White House said the post was false.
Why it mattered
A single false post from a trusted news account briefly knocked a large amount of value off the US stock market. It showed that social media accounts are part of an organization’s critical systems, and that automated systems can react to false information faster than anyone can check it.
The lesson today
The damage came from trust. People and computers believed the post because of the account it came from. Every business has accounts like that: the company email, the social media pages, the website. If someone takes them over, they can speak for you. Those accounts need strong, unique passwords, multi-factor authentication and a short, known list of people who can sign in.
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