Iranian media falls for Obama BlackBerry hack hoax

A news website in Iran has been left with egg on its face after falling for a “joke” story about Barack Obama’s BlackBerry being hacked, and secret emails between the US President and his closest aides being released to the world.

The website PressTV.ir picked up on a Fox News story about a new comedy book, claiming to reveal Obama’s secret BlackBerry communications with the likes of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Nuclear Command and Control, and – unfortunately – reported the jocular claims of hackers gaining access to the world’s most important mobile phone as fact.

The confusion was probably brought about by the…

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.