Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Twitter a/c hacked, tweet on Bitcoin posted

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Twitter handle was briefly hacked on Sunday, and a tweet claiming that India has "officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender" was put out from it. The Prime Minister's Office later said the account was immediately secured after the matter was escalated to Twitter.

"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," it said.

The tweet, after Modi's personal handle was hacked, also claimed that India has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them among its residents and shared a link, asking people to hurry up. The future has come today, it said.

The account of PM Modi, who has more than 73.4 million followers, has now been restored.

Before the account was restored, a tweet was shared with a URL on PM Modi's timeline which read, "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." Minutes later, another tweet was posted, saying, "Yes this account is hacked by John Wick (hckindia@tutanota.com), We have not hacked Paytm Mall."

"We have 24X7 open lines of communication with the PM's Office and our teams took necessary steps to secure the compromised account as soon as we became aware of this activity. Our investigation has revealed that there are no signs of any other impacted accounts at this time," a Twitter spokesperson said. 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 with a series of tweets asking followers to donate to a relief fund through cryptocurrency.