Hackers posted tweets from the personal account of PM Modi asking for donations in Bitcoin.
On Thursday, Twitter confirmed that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal Twitter account got hacked on Thursday.
PM Modi’s Twitter handle has 2.5 million followers, and it is one of the many verified accounts that the prime minister uses. The one that got hacked was linked to his website narendramodi.in and Narendra Modi mobile app.
The hackers posted a series of fake tweets from 45 accounts, accessed private messages of 36 accounts, and downloaded Twitter data from 7 accounts. Twitter is currently investigating the incident.
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Reportedly, hackers hacked the verified Twitter handle of the Indian PM (@narendramodi_in) and posted tweets to encourage his follower to make donations for a relief fund in bitcoin.
One of the tweets read:
“Yes, this account is hacked by John Wick.”
Another one asked people to donate to PM’s COVID-19 relief fund generously:
“I appeal to you all to donate generously to PM National Relief Fund for Covid-19, Now India begin with cryptocurrency.”
Another tweet sent out by hackers addressed the reported Paytm Mall hack and denied having anything to do with it. Here’s a tweet in which hackers said that they did not hack Paytm Mall.
According to cybersecurity firm Cyble, on 30 August a hacker group ‘John Wick’ was involved in Paytm’s e-commerce unit Paytm Mall data breach. However, Paytm Mall claimed that no security lapses were identified that could have led to security or data breach. Whether this group has any involvement in the current incident, only time will reveal.
Twitter revealed on Thursday that the hack wasn’t caused by a security lapse in its systems or services.
Moreover, the social networking website noted no correlation between this incident and the incident from 15 July when over 130 verified Twitter handles of high-profile public figures were hacked to post similar messages.
In that particular case, Twitter explained on 30 July, hackers managed to access its internal systems using the credentials of some of its employees that got compromised through phone phishing.
Regarding the latest incident, Twitter claims that it is aware of the activity and has implemented measures to secure it.
“We are actively investigating the situation. At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted.”
So far, neither PM Modi’s office nor the Indian Ministry of Information Technology has released any official statement.
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