The Twitter account fo Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been "compromised" according to government officials, who posted a warning over several suspicious links that had been shared via the Twitter handle on Sunday. The hackers allegedly left a tweet claiming to be "John Wick" and left the email "hckindia@tutanota.com" in a series of bizarre tweets from the PMO handle.
"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 tweeted.
"India has officially accepted bitcoin as legal tender. The government has officially bought 500 BTC and distributing them to all residents of the country...the future has come today!" reads the now-deleted tweet. Along with the tweet, a possible scam link was also attached. Another tweet claimed that the Prime Minister's Disaster Relief Fund was now accepting donations in cryptocurrency, along with another link.
According to reports the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) is now looking into the matter and trying to ascertain who may have committed the act.
The tweets sent social media users into a brief uproar as theh began to trend the hashtag #Hacked in response. Many expressed worry as to how many unsuspecting users would have clicked on the link shared by the Prime Minister's verified handle.
Earlier, in September 2020, the Twitter account linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal website and mobile app was hacked by an unknown group.
"Please do not click on the link. It's a scam. ... Even PM's account is not safe. How safe will be Indian social media from hackers, manipulators, scammers and foreign influence? Twitter verified security compromised?" asked a Twitter user.