A group loosely connected to the hacker collective Anonymous says it took control of the Fox News Politics Twitter account to claim that President Obama had been assassinated while campaigning in Iowa.

The Fox News Politics account – @foxnewspolitics – was used to put out a number of fake tweets saying that President Obama had been shot in the head and died, and that vice-president Joe Biden had been installed in his place. The tweets went out at around 2am Pacific time (5am EST, 10am BST). Obama is in fact thought to be in Washington at the White House, where his schedule shows he is due to give a speech in the Rose Garden at 6.30pm.

A representative of the group 'Scriptkiddies' said in an interview with Stony Brook University's Think Magazine: "We are looking to find information about corporations to assist with antisec [a concerted hacker attack on corporate and government security]. Fox News was selected because we figured their security would be just as much of a joke as their reporting."

He warned too that Fox News might see more attacks: "I've looked into their security, and site defacement does not seem to be an option. Everything else is fair game."

The Script Kiddies representative added: "I would consider us to be close in relation [to Anonymous], two of the members of our group were members of Anonymous ... I was a member of Anonymous. We hope to be working with them soon."

'Script kiddie' is a generally insulting phrase used by hackers about inexperienced would-be hackers who used ready-made programs to attack sites. The group's name here plays on that.

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The attack is the latest in a rapidly growing list of attacks this year on the online presence of corporations and governments since Sony's PlayStation Network was hacked in April, exposing the details of more than 75 million users. Since then many other game and company sites have been hit, with varying degrees of disruption.

The Script Kiddie representative told Think Magazine: "It will be a never-ending battle. The names change from time to time, like LulzSec and Anonymous or Script Kiddies. But there will always be a group of people that need to stand up for everyone else and attempt to keep the government in balance with its people. Without groups like Anonymous, what is there to prevent corruption?"

The group tried to create a number of Twitter accounts, but they had all been suspended wtihin hours of being created.

Meanwhile, "AnonymousIRC" – thought to be composed of some of the leaders of LulzSec – has continued to attack web systems belonging to the Arizona police. They also leaked the user names and encrypted passwords to a survey system belonging to Apple, saying: "Apple could be [a] target, too. But don't worry, we are busy elsewhere."