Indian PM Narendra Modi target of Twitter hack

The Twitter account of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal website and mobile app was hacked early this morning. The social media platform, while confirming it, said "it has taken steps to secure the compromised account and is "actively investigating" the situation." This incident comes on the back of several Twitter accounts of prominent personalities being hacked in July this year.

Modi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the tweets posted on the account @narendramodi_in.

The account, with over 2.5 million followers, is the official Twitter handle for Modi’s personal website (www.narendramodi.in) and the Narendra Modi mobile application.

Modi’s personal Twitter account, @narendramodi, which was unaffected by this incident, has over 61 million followers.

• Check out our list of the best identity theft protection out there
• We've built a list of the best password managers available
• Here's our list of the best email services on the market

The hack

(Image credit: Twitter)

At 3:09 a.m IST today (September 3, 2020), a series of tweets were posted from the Twitter account @narendramodi_in. The tweets were removed an hour later at around 4:05 a.m.

In the first tweet, the hacker appealed to the followers of the Twitter account to donate generously to the PM National Relief Fund for Covid-19 and claimed that the Indian government is accepting donations via Bitcoin.

(Image credit: Twitter)

In the last tweet posted at around 3:16 a.m., the hacker group ‘John Wick’ took the responsibility of hacking the account.

'John Wick' group in the thick of it

Recently, Paytm Mall, the e-commerce marketplace wing of Paytm, was allegedly hacked, according to risk intelligence platform Cyble, by the same group that calls itself 'John Wick'. However, in a series of tweets, ‘John Wick’ claimed it did not hack PayTM Mall.

Hackers had in July accessed Twitter's internal systems to hijack some of the platform's top names including US presidential candidate Joe Biden, former US President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk, and used them to solicit digital currency.

Twitter believes a targeted spear-phishing attack allowed hackers to gain entry to its internal systems on July 15, leading to the compromise of a number of high-profile accounts.

• Here's our list of the best antivirus services on the market

from TechRadar - All the latest technology news https://ift.tt/2Z1fKs5