PM Modi account hack: Twitter says necessary steps taken to secure handle

"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," a Twitter spokesperson told India Today.

"Our investigation has revealed that there are no signs of any other impacted accounts at this time," the spokesperson added.

Twitter's initial investigation has indicated that the Prime Minister's account was "was not compromised due to any breach of Twitter's internal systems", according to sources.

The probe into the hack also suggested that the incident followed a different pattern as compared to 2020's global hack of accounts of world leaders that had been carried out using coordinated social engineering attacks.

Primary investigation indicates that Sunday's incident was a one-off attack which was only targeted at a specific Twitter account - PM Modi's personal handle.

What had happened?

On Sunday morning, PM Modi's Twitter handle was briefly compromised posting a single tweet.

"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," read the tweet posted by PM Modi's Twitter account while it was compromised. The tweet was later deleted and the prime minister's account was restored.

The Prime Minister Office's (PMO) in its response to the incident stated that PM Modi's Twitter handle was "briefly compromised" and the matter was escalated to Twitter. "The account has been immediately secured. In the brief period that the account was compromised, any tweet shared must be ignored," wrote PMO.

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.

— PMO India (@PMOIndia) December 11, 2021

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) has been trying to identify the source of the hacking incident, according to sources.