With around 73.4 million followers, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Twitter handle is the most popular among the world leaders'. As it happens, it seems to be the most targeted by the hackers, too. Early Sunday morning, the Twitter account of the Indian Prime Minister was hacked by unidentified malcontents. And worryingly, it is the second such hack in 18 months.
Last September, the same Twitter account that is linked to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal website and mobile app was compromised for some minutes.
But at least then the hack came on the back of Twitter accounts of several prominent personalities (including Biden, Obama and Musk) also being targeted. At that time, the hack was attributed to the cyber criminal group 'John Wick'. No such thing this time around. And that is where the trouble lies.
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But what really happened?
Narendra Modi's Twitter early Sunday morning had a message saying India had adopted bitcoin as legal tender and would distribute it to all citizens.
Later his office said through a tweet that the Prime Minister's Twitter account was "very briefly compromised." The tweet was swiftly deleted, but its screenshot is still available on the net.
Twitter, for its part, has clarified that it stepped in immediately to salvage the account.
"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 was quoted as saying.
Is the system really safe?
Though it did not say it in as many words, Twitter's clarification seem to suggest that the hack may have happened at the user's end. If indeed that is the case, it reflects very badly on the systems and surveillance in place at the office of one of world's top leaders.
As many snarky users on Twitter pointed out, if the Prime Minister's account can't be secured, how safe is the public's details available on Aadhaar, which in itself has been at the butt of several hacking attempts before.
Also, the info in the hacked tweet is equally bothersome. The message that Bitcoin will be the legal tender of India seems to cock a snook at the nation because it comes at a time when Parliament is set to crack down on the cryptocurrency trade. Modi himself said last month that cryptocurrencies could "spoil our youth".
In a sense, it is understandable that popular public leaders are vulnerable to such motivated cyber criminal gambits. To let it happen once is accident. But to have it repeated is shambolic.
