Hackers Compromise Indian Prime Minister's Twitter Account
The personal Twitter account of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been compromised and government officials are urgently investigating how his account was hacked.
Attackers were able to hack into the social media account on December 11 and tweeted messages to his more than 73 million followers.
The messages falsely claimed that India would be adopting Bitcoin as its official currency and that the Indian government had bought 500 Bitcoin tokens and would distribute them across the country.
The false statements included a link to a malicious website designed to appear as though it was part of the Bitcoin giveaway promotion. Shortly after the illegitimate tweet was posted, it was deleted from the account. The fake tweets were entirely contrary to previous statements made by the Indian government will refuse to recognise Bitcoin as a currency in the country.
After the attack, the Office of the Prime Minister of India issued a tweet of its own informing the public that the tweets were false and to disregard any communications shared by the perpetrators.
A Twitter spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that it had secured Modi’s account “as soon as we became aware of this activity.” Twitter said no other accounts were compromised in the incident. Twitter said that it had secured Modi’s account once it became aware of the unauthorized activity. No other accounts were compromised in the incident.
The identities of the hackers are currently unknown. An investigation into the Twitter hack has been launched by the police in India.
Twitter hackers targeting accounts of prominent individuals isn’t something new. In fact, there have been several high-profile cases of social media accounts like Twitter of celebrities, politicians, and sports personalities that have been breached over the years. While celebrities who’ve had their social media pieces hacked did not have such a huge impact on their followers, it’s a different and more serious issue when politicians get their accounts hacked.
It is not the first time that senior government Twitter accounts has been compromised. Last year, the Indian Prime Minister’s relief fund was taken over and a series of fake tweets were sent out seeking donations to an account belonging to the hackers. Followers were asked in a series of tweets to donate to India’s National Relief Fund through crypto currency.
In in July 2020, US presidential candidate Joe Biden, former US President Barack Obama and Tesla CEO Elon Musk had their accounts taken over and used to solicit digital currency and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked.
India is in the process of formulating a national Cyber Crisis Management Plan to countering cyber attacks and extortion for implementation by all ministries and departments.
Times of India: Techwire Asia: Oodaloop: Infosecurity Magazine: WSJ:
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