Crypto scammers, on Sunday, hacked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account, posting a message that “The Indian government had officially bought 500 bitcoin and was distributing them to all residents of the country.”
The tweet was deleted a few hours after the matter was reported to Twitter, and Modi’s personal Twitter handle @narendramodi was immediately secured, PMO India’s tweet said, adding that any tweet shared during the brief period when the account was compromised 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 incident occurred on Sunday, as India prepares to crack down on the booming cryptocurrency market with a new law expected to be passed in parliament this month. Although any specifics concerning the proposed legislation remain unknown, the government has indicated that private digital currencies will be prohibited.
After the situation was resolved, a Twitter spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters that the company took the required actions to secure the compromised account as soon as it became aware of the activity, and further investigation identified that there were no other impacted accounts at the time.
This is the second instance that one of Modi’s Twitter accounts has been hacked during the past year. In 2020, a hacker briefly took over the Indian Prime Minister’s account to post a message for the Indian public, urging them to donate to a fake COVID-19 fund.
Since the Indian Supreme Court overturned a prior ban last year, the local crypto sector has exploded, with Bollywood superstars and cricket stars fronting ad campaigns for local exchanges.
