“The Twitter handle of PM @narendramodi was very briefly compromised. The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account has been immediately secured. In the brief period that the account was compromised, any tweet shared must be ignored,” PMO India said in a tweet. The account was “secured” just after the news of ‘Modi’s Twitter handle has been hacked’ spread, a spokesperson for Twitter said. He added that they have 24×7 open lines of communication with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office. Also, their team took significant steps and measures to secure the compromised account as soon as they were informed about the hacking incident. There are no such signs of other impacted accounts as per their investigation.
What further action has been taken?
To find out the source of the hacking incident, latest technology is being used. Sources affirm, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) is on duty to identify the source of hacking. The incident was all over the Twitter with the hashtags trend #hacked.
Hacking incident was not for the first time
Last year several Twitter accounts were hacked. Pm Narendra Modi’s Twitter handle was also one of them. Modi’s relief fund was taken over by the hackers last year. The tweet appealed people to donate for Modi’s relief fund. With the tweet, an attachment was linked that redirected to hacker’s account. The tweet seeking for funds was in the name of COVID-19 relief efforts. The tweet stated “I appeal to you all to donate generously to PM National Relief Fund for Covid-19. Now India begins with cryptocurrency. Kindly donate bitcoins to (bitcoin wallet address)”. The hackers identified themselves as ‘John Wick’. They later claimed that they hacked Modi’s account to “clear their name” from an earlier data breach incident. They also identified themselves as Korea based hackers. The other renowned personalities whose Twitter accounts were hacked recently were, Former US President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. It was directly linked to a Bitcoin scam.
