E! News Twitter Account Hacked: Justin Bieber Not Gay

The E! News Twitter account was hacked by a group known as the Syrian Electronic Army. On Saturday, their first attack was to tweet that Justin Bieber had come out as gay.

The post was retweeted by E! News followers several hundred times before they realized the account had been compromised. E! News quickly announced that they had been hacked. Their account remained suspended for most of Saturday but has since returned.

The @eonline Twitter account, which has 5.2 million followers, tweeted "Exclusive: Justin Bieber to E!online: I'm a gay." The incorrect usage of the phrase "I'm a gay," led to some suspicion regarding the validity of this claim. However, this announcement prompted 1,200 retweets and 351 favorites.

The hackers also sent out a tweet of a false statement by Angelina Jolie saying that "Jordan is to blame for the Syrian refugees' atrocious conditions." This post was also widely retweeted before the E! News account was suspended.

The Syrian Electronic Army reportedly has ties to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The group also claims responsibility for hacking the Associated Press twitter account in April, in which they tweeted that the White House had been hit by explosives. The fake news had a temporary but disastrous impact on the financial markets.

The group has also hacked BBC, NPR, France 24 TV, and the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. These hacks have put pressure on Twitter to develop a two-step verification process.

E! News released the following statement about the incident: "E! Online's breaking news Twitter and SMS accounts were compromised today. We're working to have this resolved as quickly as possible and are fully investigating the incident. We apologize for any confusion that the erroneous news alerts may have caused."