NBC News’ Twitter account was hacked Sept. 9. In a matter of a few moments, four fake tweets were published claiming that the site of New York’s World Trade Center had been attacked. The fake tweets claimed that “Flight 5736 has crashed into the site, suspected hijacking.” A few minutes later, a fake tweet claiming that “Flight 4782 is not responding, suspected hijacking.”
The hashtag “#groundzeroattacked” was attached to the fake tweets. In a final tweet, eight minutes after the hacking appeared to have occured, hacking group “The Script Kiddies” accepted responsibility for the hack. Shortly after, NBC News’ Twitter account was suspended.
As the fake tweets were posted, a few journalists including NBC News’ Ryan Osborn and NBC’s chief digital officer Vivian Schiller tweeted announcements about the hacking and calling on readers to ignore the bad information.