Hacked AP Twitter Feed Causes Brief Stock Market Slump

Bogus report of an attack on the White House

The Associated Press's Twitter feed was hacked on Tuesday with a fake message to its 1.9 million followers, "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured"—causing the financial markets to briefly plummet by over 140 points.

Shortly after the tweet was sent out, the AP informed its wire subscribers that its Twitter account "has been hacked. The tweet about an attack at the White House is false. We will advise more as soon as possible."

The tweet sent the markets down, but they quickly snapped back, CNBC reported. "It partly explains the unusual activity in the Dow… where the Dow really cascaded there before zipping right back," CNBC's Tyler Mathisen said.