Twitter says ‘took steps’ to secure Modi’s account after early-morning hack


Twitter explained on Sunday it took “vital actions” to protected Key Minister Narendra Modi’s cope with, which was hacked early this early morning to make a fake put up about India adopting bitcoin as lawful tender.


“The subject was escalated to Twitter and the account has been quickly secured. In the temporary interval that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored,” the Key Minister’s Workplace claimed on the social media site at 3.18 a.m.







Modi’s account tweeted at 3 a.m. that stated India experienced adopted bitcoin as lawful tender and purchased 500 models of the cryptocurrency to be distributed to the country’s people. That tweet was deleted.


“We have 24×7 open traces of communication with the PM’s Office and our teams took vital measures to safe the compromised account as shortly as we grew to become informed of this action. Our investigation has uncovered that there are no indicators of any other impacted accounts at this time,” stated a Twitter spokesperson.


Bitcoin has been in turmoil for 10 times, with its price tag dropping beneath $50,000 for the very first time due to the fact May perhaps. The price tag of the crypto currency shot up by $200 from $48,600 at 3 a.m. India time, when the false tweet was shared from Modi’s account, to above $48,800 at 3:30 a.m., in accordance to CoinMarketCap information.


Nischal Shetty, CEO and founder of crypto trade WazirX, mentioned that there ended up no substantial fluctuations of bitcoin charges or strange trading volume on the system in the aftermath of the hack.


“A increase of $200 is a usual fluctuation in phrases of crypto prices and I really don’t think it was a consequence of what was tweeted as a final result of the hack. The response time (for traders) was extremely significantly less as the tweet was instantly deleted,” claimed Shetty.


A spokesperson for crypto trade CoinSwitch Kuber also said that the system did not see any sizeable influence in costs because of to the tweet.


Saket Modi, CEO and co-founder of cybersecurity enterprise Safe Protection, claimed that the technical purpose guiding the hack was not distinct as but. “It is not as although the two-issue authentication technique can not be compromised. A hacker could also get accessibility by impersonating a session or cookies attached to a distinct on the web account.”


Two-issue authentication is an additional security layer that boosts the obstacles for a hacker hoping to attain accessibility to a person’s on-line accounts.


According to a cybersecurity specialist, it is doable that the persons who hacked Modi’s account could have been aspect of a hacktivist team striving to make a political place. It could also be that the hackers sought to capitalise on the fluctuations in crypto costs and make revenue.


Late past thirty day period, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned the government experienced no proposal to recognise Bitcoin as a forex in the state.


A July 2020 hacking had compromised dozens of Twitter accounts and allegedly netted extra than $118,000 of bitcoin. The accounts integrated individuals of the present-day US President Joe Biden, previous President Barack Obama, Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Tesla’s Elon Musk, actuality Tv set star Kim Kardashian and Ye, the rapper when recognised as Kanye West.

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