Citizens who follow Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta on Twitter were in for a surprise on Friday morning. The account had been hacked, and the name and display picture were changed.
The account was renamed as TΣSLA and the hacker had tweeted from the account. The account name was later changed to “-“.
Acknowledging the hacking of the account, Mr. Gupta told The Hindu that the BBMP had filed a complaint with the cyber crime police. The Twitter account was later retrieved by the social media team.
“We do not know how the account was hacked or the identity of the culprit. There will be stricter controls put in place now to ensure such incidents do not recur,” he said.
He said the Twitter account was an important vehicle of communication with citizens. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the account has been used to post information on COVID-19, especially on COVID-19 appropriate behaviour and data on COVID-19 cases in Bengaluru.
BBMP sources, however, claimed that this was not an issue of hacking, but a misuse of the password by someone who was earlier part of the social media team of the former Commissioner. “The earlier team had four to five persons. Now, a new team has taken over. We suspect it could be a case of password misuse,” the source said.
