FollowLess than one month after the social media attained controller’s blessing to be one of the main sources for the market moving news, hacking of Twitter Inc. account of Associated Press is giving rise to issues over reliability of information spread through micro blogging website.
Stocks declined nearly one percent yesterday after Associated Press, which is the largest news agency in the entire world said that hacking attack resulted in sending an wrongTwitter post regarding explosions at White House. 500 Index of The Standard & Poorrecovered following the loss of about one hundred and thirty six billion dollar as market value and later on removed account.
Attack comes as CEO DickCostolo is planning to develop service as viable trade and preparing possible public offering. United States securities as well as Exchange Commission during the earlier half of this month said that the firms can utilize social media websites like Facebook and Twitter for sharing the announcements made by the company for moving the markets.
As per Wade Williamson, AP incident poses danger to twitter’s brand as vehicle for the latest news and steps pressure on a company located in San Francisco to strengthen security for the users.
Williamson said that account that was compromised is huge difference as opposed to traditional impersonating celebrity to tell something which is very shocking. “When one impersonatessomeone, individuals actually believe and have some kind of implicit belief.
Williamson said that the attack does not seem to be specifically technical sophisticated and is probably an instance of account hijacking that involves theft password of AP account user.
Incident follows one week when thesocial media had a vital role after Boston Marathon blastas the Twitter postings and several led to fast spreading of information. Though some of the fanned rumors through Twitter, extra posts were noted to be more reliable compared to the traditional media. According to Susan Etlinger, shareholders should take certain steps for verifying information even if it comes from a trusted source.
Etlinger told in an interview that this is really a risk to social media. It does signify that we should not use social media rather it means that we should look for better methods for authentication and fast-checking.
News agency which told aboutthe wrong information from AP account and Barack Obama was wounded, came after several attempts by the hackers to attain access to the passwords of AP reporters. AP said it is working for fixing vulnerability.
