NEW DELHI – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter handle, which has over 73 million followers, was hacked in the wee hours of Sunday, his office confirmed.
“India has officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender. The government has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all residents of the country,” the spam tweet on cryptocurrency cited which was later deleted.
Following the development, the Indian Prime Minister Office cleared the air with a tweet that stated “The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account has been immediately secured, in the brief period that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored.”
The Twitter handle of PM @narendramodi was very briefly compromised. The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account has been immediately secured.
In the brief period that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored.
— PMO India (@PMOIndia) December 11, 2021
The account using the handle @narendramodi has since been restored after the brief incident, it also added.
Before the restoration of Modi’s account, #Hacked began trending in the second-most populous country while the screenshots were shared on Twitter by social media users.
The Twitter account of the Indian premier’s personal website was also hacked earlier in September 2020 and tweets soliciting Cryptocurrency were shared.