Thomson Reuters Is Apparently the Latest Pro-Assad Twitter Hack Victim
Late on Monday afternoon, the Thomson Reuters corporate Twitter account started posting a series of tweets supportive of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad, leading many to believe that the account @thomsonreuters was the latest victim of a series of twitter hacks targeting news organizations.
Normal. RT @stefanjbecket: Or had dramatic editorial shift. RT @katz: Appears that @thomsonreuters has been hacked
— Jonathan Wald (@jonathanwald) July 29, 2013
The apparent hack affected Reuters's social media-managed corporate account with about 83,000 followers, not to be confused with the more popular @Reuters breaking news Twitter feed, which pulls about 3 million followers. Here's the account's feed, as of late Monday:
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After a 20-minute break, the individuals posting from the account followed up with a somewhat expected claim that the account had been compromised by the Syrian Electronic Army:
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It looks like Thomson Reuters will join the Financial Times, the AP, the Onion, the BBC and NPR, among others, in falling victim to the SEA. A sampling of the images tweeted from the Reuters corporate account are below, but be warned: while cartoons, they're still somewhat graphic and offensive:
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We'll update here when we know more.
