Air India Twitter account hacked; restored later

Mumbai: Air India's official Twitter account was hacked late on Wednesday night and was restored on Thursday, according to the airline. After many hours of being hacked, Air India said in the afternoon that the account has been restored. 

Messages in Turkish language were posted on the handle @airindiain to mislead passengers, an Air India spokesperson said, adding that all the malicious contents posted on the handle have been removed. "Early today #AirIndia twitter handle @airindiain was hacked.

We would like to inform our passengers, that the handle is fully functional now," the airline said in a tweet at little past 1220 hours. There is no cyber security threat on this handle and security measures have been taken, the airline said, adding "Thank you @Twitter @TwitterIndia". 

Air India has 1,46,000 followers on Twitter. When contacted, a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement, "We take account security and privacy very seriously. Our teams are working to resolve the immediate issue in India, and on a range of longer-term solutions". 

The statement came before Air India's tweet on restoring the Twitter handle. In the morning, the spokesperson said Air India immediately swung into action and took up the matter with the Twitter authorities.

"All malicious content was removed on a war-footing," he said in a statement. One of the posts by the hackers read, "Last minute important announcement. All our flights have been cancelled. From now on, we will fly with Turkish Airlines". 

Against this backdrop, the spokesperson had said that all Air India flights are operating as per schedule and requested passengers to ignore any misleading and mischievous communication on operations.