Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Twitter handle was briefly hacked early on Sunday, and a post claiming that India had officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender was tweeted from it.
While Twitter said it took steps to secure the account as soon as it became aware of the issue, it added that as per company’s investigations this was not due to a compromise of its systems or service.
“The Twitter handle of OM @narendramodi was very briefly compromised, The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account has been immediately secured,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a tweet.
In the brief time that it was compromised, the tweet sent out from Mr Modi’s handle read: ‘India has officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender. The government has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all the residents of the country.’ The tweet also shared a link, asking people to hurry up as the ‘future has come today!’
“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,” a Twitter spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The U.S.-headquartered microblogging site added that as per its investigation to date, it appears that the account was not compromised due to any breach of Twitter’s systems.
Earlier in March 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account was hacked with hackers attempting to solicit cryptocurrency from his followers.
Mr Modi’s Twitter account has over 73.4 million followers, and he follows 2,367 accounts.
