“Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured,” the Associated Press tweeted yesterday.

If you were one of the many who read the tweet, I’m pretty sure you were alarmed and concerned, since the news came from a legit news source.  But lo and behold, the news was not real, as the Twitter account was apparently hacked.

Unfortunately, before it was revealed that the tweet was not real, the mischievous post has already done its damage, the Dow plummeted nearly 100 points following the tweet, briefly losing $100 billion.  Though it quickly recovered, people can’t help but think how one tweet could result to so much chaos on Wall Street?

To give his Breaking Analysis on AP hack and how one tweet could cause utter chaos, SiliconANGLE Contributing Editor John Casaretto dropped by at this morning’s NewsDesk with Kristin Feledy.

Mike Baker of the Associated Press sent out a tweet which read “The @AP hack came less than an hour after some of us received an impressively disguised phishing email.” This just shows how persistent these hackers are in infiltrating the news source, or any other news source for that matter, as the CBS also reported that its Twitter account was hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army over the weekend, the same entity responsible for the AP hack.

So why attack news sources?  The AP Twitter hack proved how 140 characters could disrupt the industry.

“The SEA has taken credit for these things and they’re seeing it as an action against the other people that are against to what they see as their cause,” Casaretto explains.  “I think they see Twitter as something that’s weak, that they’re able to exploit the fact that they are able to hack this things pretty easily… What people should do is to keep that official Twitter account access to a minimum.  Quite often it’s shared amongst a number of people.”

Because of the fact that these official Twitter accounts are shared, hackers see this is a soft target, but a valuable target nonetheless.

The FBI is now looking into these Twitter hacks since the AP tweet pertains to an elected official being hurt.  These tweets could be real threats directed at the White House and President Obama.

As for Twitter now becoming a primary news source, it is the microblogging site’s strength as it is the fastest way of disseminating and consuming information, but it also poses as a huge vulnerability as wrong information can just as easily be spread by Twitter users.

Twitter will be rolling out a new two-step verification security feature which it has began testing internally.  No news yet as to when Twitter will start rolling out its two-step verification, but it would probably be rolled out as soon as possible.

To catch more of Casaretto’s Breaking Analysis, check out the NewsDesk video below.