Anush Shetty 7th September, 2020
Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Source: Indian Express)
Twitter confirmed that the official handle of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was hacked. The account, @narendramodi_in, was hacked at around 3:15 am on Thursday. The account currently has 25 lakh followers. The individual behind the encroachment uploaded a series of tweets asking followers to donate to relief funds using cryptocurrency. Twitter said to LiveMint that they went through the matter and noticed the abnormal activity. Subsequently, they realised that the account had been compromised. Employees at Twitter then took steps to secure the account.
A Twitter spokesperson told LiveMint, “We are actively investigating the situation. At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted,”. The Prime Minister’s personal twitter handle, which has 6.1 crore followers, was not affected. Twitter reassured users by saying that this attack was not due to the compromise of Twitter terms and service. Paytm Mall also released a statement saying that they did not record any security lapses and are currently investigating any security breaches.
The tweets made reference to the fictional eponymous character John Wick, and made claims of not having hacked into Paytm Mall. Another tweet read, “appeal to you all to donate generously to PM National Relief Fund for COVID-19”, following which the hacker also uploaded the details of a crypto-currency wallet and implored people to contribute.
The hacking of Narendra Modi’s account comes after the massive cyber-attack that happened two months ago where the accounts of around 130 high-profile celebrity accounts were targeted. Out of the 130, there are only a few records of conspicuous characters hacked.
Programmers had gotten to Twitter's inside framework to capture a portion of the site's top profiles, including US presidential candidate Joe Biden, previous US President Barack Obama, and wealthy business investor Elon Musk. They then utilised them to request computerised money. The corporate records for Uber and Apple were likewise undermined in the significant break. This attack was made possible because the hackers used Twitter’s own internal administration tools.
(Sources: Times Now, Indian Express, LiveMint)
Edited by Varun Vyas Hebbalalu