A series of disturbing public announcements were sent out via FOXnewspolitics’ twitter account stating that the President of the United States had shot dead during an assassination.

Twitter went bananas last night! With many social networkers falling for the “Breaking News” but all the while, President Obama was safe and sound, spending time with his family.

Foxnews.com sent out a prepared statement about the incident, claiming they were hacked and that the “Breaking News” messages weren’t sent by anyone at Fox.

Hackers sent out several malicious and false tweets that President Obama had been assassinated. Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family.

The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false tweets may have created.

This recent incident adds to a growing trend of high-profile cyber security breaches around the world, including an incident where PBS was hacked with a fake story about Tupac being alive.  The disturbing nature of Fox’s tweets has even prompted the Secret Service to get involved!

Additional details + view all of the disturbing messages that were displayed on FoxNewsPolitics’ twitter account:

The White House has declined to comment, but George Ogilvie (spokesman for The Secret Service, which is charged with protecting the president), said it was looking into the incident.

The Secret Service is investigating the matter and will conduct the appropriate follow-up.

The first hacked tweet appeared last night around 2 a.m. and was followed up by several “Breaking News” tweets citing the same dismal news.  The hacked tweets remained posted for several hours.

According to Mashable, Fox News is working with Twitter to address the situation as quickly as possible.

We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts.

In my opinion, a “detailed investigation” is NOT enough. Someone needs to be held accountable because while it may seem like a harmless hacking, the nature of the tweets could possible be viewed as a “call to arms” by militant groups that have ill will towards our President.

It’s definitely a threat to national security… hack or no hack!

Should Fox’s “hacking” incident be viewed as an actual THREAT, an issue that was out of their control, or should this “hacking” be merely added to FoxNews’ growing list of “mistakes” ???

Let’s not forget about that “Obama Bin Ladin” mishap…..