Twitter account of Narendra Modi's personal website, app hacked; 'actively investigating', says micro-blogging platform

The Twitter account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal website and the mobile app was hacked, the social media giant confirmed on Thursday, according to several media reports. The handle narendramodi_in earlier put up a series of tweets asking followers to donate to PM CARES fund through cryptocurrency, reported India Today. Those tweets have been taken down, as per the report. In a series of tweets related to bitcoin, the messages posted on the Twitter account linked to his online portal read: “I appeal to you all to donate generously to PM National Relief Fund for Covid-19, Now India begin with crypto currency, Kindly Donate eth to 0xae073DB1e5752faFF169B1ede7E8E94bF7f80Be6.”

It further said, “Yes this account is hacked by John Wick (hckindia@tutanota.com), We have not hacked Paytm Mall.” The prime minister’s personal Twitter account, which has over 61 million followers, remains unaffected, reported  NDTV.   Twitter, in an email to news agency Reuters, said that it has taken “steps to secure the compromised account” and is “actively investigating” the situation. “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,” a Twitter spokesperson said.   On 30 August, Alibaba Group-funded Paytm Mall has allegedly suffered a “massive” data breach, reported global cybersecurity firm Cyble, with a known cybercrime group ‘John Wick’ gaining unrestricted access to the e-commerce firm’s entire databases. Cyble had claimed the hacker group had also demanded ransom, as it had got unrestricted access to the firm’s database. Paytm had, however, said it had not found any data breach during an investigation. The incident comes after several Twitter accounts of prominent personalities were hacked in July. Hackers then had accessed Twitter’s internal systems to hijack some of the platform’s top voices including US presidential candidate Joe Biden, former US President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk, and used them to solicit digital currency. The corporate accounts for Uber and Apple were also affected during the major breach, reported India Today. Following this, India's cybersecurity nodal agency CERT-In had issued a notice to Twitter asking the micro-blogging platform for full details of a global hacking incident targeting high-profile users. The source privy to the development told PTI that CERT-In has also asked Twitter for information on number of users from India who have visited the malicious tweets and links, and whether the affected users have been informed by the platform about unauthorised access to their Twitter accounts.