On Thursday morning, a little after 9 a.m. ET, the New York Post Twitter was hacked. Unauthorized messages described as “violent” and “racially or sexually vulgar” were sent out.
By 9:30 a.m. the tweets were gone and the Post sent out a real tweet explaining what happened, “The New York Post has been hacked. We are currently investigating the cause.”
The tweets revolved primarily around politicians. Some called for the death of President Biden and his son Hunter while others wanted unionized teachers to be imprisoned. Each tweet included a link to the advertised opinion piece though none of the links worked.
Some of the stories were falsely attributed to conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.
The Post shared the results of their investigation and concluded that the sabotage was committed by a rogue employee. TechCrunch reported that the “tweets were sent via SocialFlow, a popular website plugin used to push stories to social media sites.”
“The New York Post’s investigation indicates that the unauthorized conduct was committed by an employee, and the employee has been terminated. This morning, we immediately removed the vile and reprehensible content from our website and social media accounts.”