hoax someone pulled on Bloomberg and Twitter

[jos]

On Tuesday morning, using the URL bloomberg.market, someone published a fake Bloomberg article claiming Twitter had received a $31 billion takeover offer. Given the site's similarities, for a few minutes people thought this article was real. After circulation of this article, which we first saw at The Fly, shares of Twitter spiked by as much as 5%

The website was registered under a proxy service called WhoisGuard Protected, which is located in Panama. Generally, proxy domain services do not disclose the identities of their customers unless given subpoena. Additionally, the person who built this website likely had at least a cursory knowledge of web development. The person copied the HTML, CSS files, and JS files from Bloomberg to make the front page look nearly identical.

 

The person who profited is Twitter. Is it Twitter sponsored one?

 

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/14/us-twitter-bloomberg-hoax-idUSKCN0PO24A20150714

 

 

[bobdabiulder]

If twitter made this fake article, they could maybe be in trouble?  Boosting stock prices of your own company doesn't seem very legal, and would at least be frowned upon.

[Delusional Phil]

Well somebody is gonna get fired ...