The Secret Service said Monday that it will investigate the recent hacking of the Fox News political Twitter account. Hackers took control of the account on Sunday and used it to tweet fake news of President Obama's assassination.

Fox News said in a statement that it had alerted the Secret Service of the incident and was told by spokesperson George Ogilvie that the law enforcement agency would do "appropriate follow up."

Meanwhile, the Think Blog at Stony Brook University said that it had spoken with a representative of the group that claimed to be responsible for the hack, The Script Kiddies. Late Sunday night, the hackers changed the logo of the Fox News account to a Script Kiddies logo and referenced the group, tweeting at the @AnonymousIRC account, for instance, that "TheScriptKiddies would love to assist." These tweets were removed before the six tweets regarding Obama's fake assassination were posted on Monday. Several Script Kiddies accounts that bragged about the hack have also been removed.

The Secret Service, whose job it is to protect the president, has made it clear that it doesn't take talk of the president's assassination lightly, even on social networks. When a Facebook poll asked "Should Obama be killed?" in 2009, the Secret Service tracked its source to a juvenile (no charges were filed). Similarly, two Twitter accounts that tweeted “ASSASSINATION! America, we survived the Assassinations and Lincoln & Kennedy. We’ll surely get over a bullet to Barrack Obama’s head” and “You Should be Assassinated!! @Barack Obama" after the healthcare reform vote last year both inspired Secret Service investigations.





