False Air Force One Crash Reported on Hijacked WSJ Facebook Page

The official social media page of the major newspaper posted a headline about the disappearance of President Obama’s plane over Russian airspace, days after the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

Flight 17 was shot down over a portion of Ukraine controlled by Russian separatists.

The bogus message appeared on Sunday.   

Many Internet users who read the post suspected it was a hoax.

"BREAKING: US Air Force One crash feared as air traffic controller loses contact with pilot over Russian air space," read the message posted by the unknown hackers.

A second post, published minutes later, claimed Vice President Joe Biden was preparing to address the nation in 15 minutes.

The Wall Street Journal recovered the account and stated: "We are aware that our Facebook page was compromised during the last 20 minutes. We have deleted the posts and are looking into it.”

Sometimes attackers don’t take over social media accounts directly, but rather enter them through third-party companies servicing those accounts.

For example, last year, when pro-Syrian government hacktivists “posted several messages on President Barack Obama's social media channels, they didn't compromise the accounts themselves, but a URL shortening service used by the company that managed them,” SecurityWeek explains.

No one had taken credit for the Journal hack as of Tuesday afternoon.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Register reported that it’s unclear if the breach is related to claims by an individual known as “w0rm” about having hacked databases owned by the Journal and Vice.  

W0rm on Monday evening posted screenshots of extracted spreadsheets to substantiate his assertions, and then offered to sell the data from both publications for 1 bitcoin apiece. The screenshots appear to show user credentials.

W0rm also has been tied to hacks against CNET and the BBC.