Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal Twitter account was briefly hacked on early hours of Sunday, his office shared the news on the social networking site early on Sunday morning, after it shared a scam link promising a bitcoin giveaway.
Several Twitter users shared screenshots of those tweets from PM Modi's account, which claimed: "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," the now-deleted tweet said.
This is not the first time that the Twitter account of a world leader was hacked by hackers by promoting a bitcoin scam. In 2020, Twitter accounts of Barak Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian and tech companies such as Apple and Uber were hacked in Bitcoin scam, affecting some of the leading cryptocurrency sites too.
The fake tweets tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.
Here's a list of personalities and world leaders whose accounts were hacked in bitcoin scam:
1. Tech giant Apple
2. Transport company Uber
3. Former US President Barack Obama
4. Tesla CEO Elon Musk
5. Now US President Joe Biden
6. Bill Gates
7. Mike Bloomberg
8. Jeff Bezos
9. Boxer Floyd Mayweather
10. Kim Kardashian
11. Kanye West
In a tweet, Twitter had noted that it was aware of a “security incident impacting accounts on Twitter.” The San Francisco company said it is investigating and promised an update shortly.
In September 2020, the personal Twitter account of PM Modi was hacked and tweets soliciting cryptocurrency were posted. Minutes later, another tweet was posted, saying, “Yes this account is hacked by John Wick (hckindia@tutanota.com), We have not hacked Paytm Mall.”
