Investigation Begins in Indian Pm’s Bitcoin (BTC) Giveaway Tweet, Here’s What Happened

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account was hacked on 12th December. The hackers behind the breach used the Indian PM’s account to tweet out a fake public announcement and also attached a free BTC giveaway scam link along with it. The dubious tweet from the hacker said that India has legalized Bitcoin as a legal tender and the Indian government has bought 500 BTC that will be distributed among the common public.

The controversial tweet was deleted and the account was restored soon after and an investigation has been launched in association with the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco.

“The Twitter handle of PM @narendramodi was very briefly compromised. The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account was immediately secured. In the brief period that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored,” PMO India tweeted.

Twitter later confirmed that it was “not compromised due to any breach of Twitter’s systems.” A Twitter spokesperson said,

“We have 24X7 open lines of communication with the PM’s Office and our teams took the 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.”

Indian PM’s Twitter Account Hacked Twice

This was not the first instance when the official Twitter account of the Indian PM with over 70 million followers was hacked. In September 2020, the account was hacked by an unknown group. The crypto giveaway scam from the Indian PM’s Twitter handle also comes at a crucial juncture when India is looking to regulate the crypto market.

Many in the mainstream media used the opportunity to bash cryptocurrency again, claiming the hack was done by a “crypto-gang.” Although the scam initiated by hackers was crypto-centered, the hack had nothing to do with crypto, and only goes to expose the security vulnerability of the platform and negligence from the team of social media handling PM’s account.