Twitter accounts belonging to Anupam Kher and several politicians were hacked by a pro-Pakistan hacker collective

Twitter accounts belonging to various prominent Twitter users in India were hacked by a Turkish group calling itself the “Turkish Cyber Army Ayyildiz Tim”. [caption id=“attachment_4338535” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The insignia used by the Turkish hacker group Ayyildiz Tim[/caption] Affected accounts include those belonging to actor Anupam Kher, his wife, Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, Economist Kaushik Basu, and BJP National General Secretary Ram Madhavan were all hacked, reports Outlook India. The affected accounts have been taken down, though Anupam Kher’s account has since been restored. The hackers posted various messages in Turkish as well as “I love Pakistan” messages from these handles before the accounts were suspended. Judging by Kher’s statement to PTI and a message from Twitter support, the accounts appear to have been compromised via a malicious URL shared via a Twitter DM. earlier today, Kher gave the following statement to PTI, “My Twitter account has been hacked. Just got few calls from friends in India about it. I am in LA and it is 1 am.”  

Before it was pulled down, a message on Dasgupta’s handle read, “Hello there! I want to introduce ourselves first. In 2002, the Republic of Turkey to protect it from cyber attacks and to combat terrorist organisations were founded. Turkey’s first cyber army of. We have 300,000s.” Twitter support has responded to the hacks with a statement that reads: “Our teams are working to resolve an issue affecting a small number of Indian users. We will notify affected account holders directly. Reminder: do not click on links in DMs coming from unknown accounts.”  

At the moment, it’s unclear if the hackers exploited a native security issue in Twitter or if they stole data via some other means. The latter seems more likely.