In what would add up to the recent hacking of Twitter accounts for prominent personalities in the west, it is now Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose personal twitter account was reportedly hacked. Twitter confirmed the same to Economic Times.
In a statement sent to ET, Twitter said, “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.”
The news is alarming in many ways. For one, the account belonged to the Prime Minister of one of world’s most populous nation, wherein he is reverred by millions. Second, this comes within weeks of a cyberattack that targeted multiple accounts in the US, including that of Elon Musk and some prominent political figures in the US. While the hacker fraudulently collected cryptocurrency in the previous hack, this time the hacker demanded donations in the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund.
Similar to the previous hack, the donations here were being asked in Bitcoin, to a fake account. It is unclear as to how much of money has already been put into the account. In series of tweets (now deleted) after the takeover of the verified handle, the hacker put out messages seeking donations to the Prime Minister’s relief fund for Covid-19 using bitcoins. “This account is hacked by John Wick (hckindia@tutanota.com), We have not hacked Paytm Mall,” the message said.
Twitter has increasingly become the center of several cyberhack controversies, with many questioning the security protocols that the company has in place for keeping high profile accounts safe. While the microblogging platform does repeatedly talk about its seriousness on security, there have been multiple incidents of high profile accounts being hacked. And when those accounts belong to leaders of various nations, the impact they could possibly have is catastrophic.
