In an embarrassing turn of events, the Twitter handle of India's Information and Broadcasting (I&B) ministry was compromised for sometime today before it was restored. For the period it was hacked, the account was facetiously renamed as “Elon Musk” and tweeted “great job”. The hackers also posted some decidedly dubious links to cryptocurrency.
The account, however, was reclaimed by the Ministry shortly and the it restored the profile picture and deleted the tweets posted by the malcontents.
Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account was briefly hacked.
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Are Indian govt's digital handles being targeted?
It seems the official Twitter handle of the I&B Ministry @MIB_India was hacked temporarily. Renamed after billionaire Elon Musk, with a number of what appear to be spam tweets. pic.twitter.com/q1GG7ZTwi1January 12, 2022
“The account @Mib_india has been restored. This is for the information of all the followers,” the ministry tweeted after the account was restored.
Till the moment of writing this, there has been no official word from Twitter.
An official governmental inquiry will be conducted to see what really transpired, it is learnt.
That a government's official account could be hacked is in itself disturbing. But worryingly, this hack comes a month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account was apparently taken over by similar cryptocurrency zealots who put out tweets on Butcoin. That was not the first hack on the Prime Minister's digital properties. In September 2020, the notorious John Wick group broke into the Twitter account linked to Modi’s personal website and mobile application.
Earlier this month, the Twitter accounts of the Indian Medical Association, Indian Council of World Affairs and Mann Deshi Mahila Bank were also hacked.
Obviously, on Twitter, there was plenty of sarcasm and snark. The general gist was if the I & B's handle could not be safeguarded, how secure is the public's details available on Aadhaar, which in itself has been at the butt of several hacking attempts before.
Also, the question, are Indian government digital properties being targeted in a concerted fashion, was being increasingly asked.
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