PM Modi's Twitter account hacked, asked followers for donations via cryptocurrency
NEW DELHI: Twitter on Thursday said the account linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal website was hacked, and it has now been restored.
"We're aware of this activity and have taken steps to secure the compromised account. We are actively investigating the situation. At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted. Advice on keeping your account secure can be found here," a Twitter spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The compromised account has about 2.5 million followers.
After hacking the @narendramodi_in Twitter account, which is the Prime Minister's personal website, the cybercriminal reportedly sent out posts seeking donations for the PM National Relief Fund for COVID-19 using crypto currency.
"Yes, this account is hacked by John Wick (hckindia@tutanota.com), We have not hacked Paytm Mall," another message had said.
On August 30, cybersecurity firm Cyble had said hacker group 'John Wick' was behind a data breach at Paytm Mall, the e-commerce unit of Paytm.
Paytm Mall had said it had not found any security lapses after investigating claims of a possible hack and data breach.
Twitter on Thursday also said as per its investigation, the latest attack was not due to a compromise of Twitter's systems or service.
There is no indication or evidence of any correlation between this account compromise and the incident that took place in July, it said.
Accounts of high-profile users like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos and others were compromised on July 15.
In an update on its blog on July 30, Twitter had said attackers had used credentials of some employees to access its internal systems and gain information about its processes.
The attackers targeted 130 Twitter accounts, ultimately Tweeting from 45, accessing the DM inbox of 36, and downloading the Twitter Data of 7 accounts, it had said.
