PM Modi's Twitter handle hacked briefly, bitcoin tweet posted

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra’s Modi’s Twitter handle got hacked and a tweet claiming that India has "officially adopted Bitcoin as legal tender" was posted. The hack was noticed and his Twitter handle was restored.

“India has officially adopted Bitcoin as legal tender. The government has officially brought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all residents of the country. Hurry up India-official.blogspot.com/#bitcoin-givea…The future has come today!,” said the tweet posted from the PM’s handle.

However, the moment the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) noticed this, it issued a statement saying the PM's Twitter handle was “briefly compromised” and the matter has been taken up with Twitter. By then, however, the screenshots of the message had circulated widely.

“The Twitter handle of PM @narendramodi was very briefly compromised. The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account was immediately secured. In the brief period that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored,” PMO tweeted.

Twitter said necessary steps have been taken to secure PM’s account and there are no signs of any other account being impacted. “As per our investigation to date, it appears that the account was not compromised due to any breach of Twitter’s systems…We have 24X7 open lines of communication with the PM's Office and our teams took necessary steps to secure the compromised account as soon as we became aware of this activity. Our investigation has revealed that there are no signs of any other impacted accounts at this time,” Twitter said.

The hack comes at a time when the government is expected to bring legislation to regulate cryptocurrencies in India. As per sources at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Computer Emergency Response System (Cert-In) is going to investigate the incident. This is not the first time a breach has happened in the PM's social media account. Last September, a series of tweets were sent from the PM's account urging people to donate cryptocurrency for a relief fund.