Indian Prime Minister Modi’s Twitter account was ‘briefly compromised’

The Twitter account of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “briefly compromised” on Sunday, his office said.

Modi’s account — whose handle is @narendramodi — tweeted after the midnight that India had officially adopted bitcoin as a legal tender, prompting suspicions about a hack because of the timing of the announcement and also as New Delhi in recent months has suggested that it will be introducing a strict law to regulate cryptocurrency. Late last month, country’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said New Delhi had no proposal to recognize bitcoin as a currency in the country.

The Sunday tweet, which has since been deleted, included a link to a sketchy website and said New Delhi had purchased some bitcoins and was planning to distribute them among the nation’s residents.

Was the Twitter account of the Hon'ble PM shri #NarendraModi ji hacked? And promise of #Bitcoin !! pic.twitter.com/uz1U2IAJaZ

— Tehseen Poonawalla Official 🇮🇳 (@tehseenp) December 11, 2021

The Prime Minister Modi’s office tweeted on Sunday that Modi’s account had been fully secured and any tweets shared during that period “must be ignored.”

Modi, with over 73 million followers on Twitter, is one of the most popular accounts on the social network. Twitter and Prime Minister’s office said the social network took the necessary steps to secure the account as soon as it became aware of the activity.

It wasn’t clear who had hacked the account. The sketchy blog it linked to was not accessible at the time of publication.