Twitter account of PM Modi's personal website hacked — asks followers for Bitcoin and Ethereum donations

• The official handle for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal website was hacked early morning on Thursday.
• The hacker behind the breach was asking users to donate Bitcoin and Ethereum to the PM's National Relief Fund.
• The tweets have no been removed and Twitter is 'actively investigating' the issue.
• A cybercriminal group called 'John Wick' has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Twitter handle of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal website was hacked on Thursday morning. And, just like with former US President Barack Obama, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and others who were hacked in July, the person behind the PM Modi's account was asking users to donate cryptocurrency — this time under the guise donating to the PM's

National Relief Fund

.


However, Twitter claims that this particular breach was not due to a compromise of its systems or service. "There is no indication or evidence of any correlation between this account compromise and the incident that took place in July," the company said in a statement shared with IANS.

The tweets have now been removed from the social networking platform. Twitter has confirmed that it's aware of the malicious activity and is taking steps to secure the compromised account. "We are actively investigating the situation. At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted," a Twitter spokeswoman told Reuters.


The handle @narendramodi_in has over 2.5 million followers. It should not be confused with Modi's personal Twitter account, @narendramodi, which has over 61 million followers.

'John Wick' claims responsibility
The attack was reportedly perpetrated by a cybercriminal group called 'John Wick'. "This account is hacked by John Wick (hckindia@tutanota.com), we have not hacked Paytm Mall," the group posted after taking over the Twitter account.

The authenticity of the claims has not yet been verified.


This is the second bitcoin scam on Twitter in less than two months
Less than two months ago, 130 high-profile Twitter accounts, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and singer Kanye West, were breached by a malicious actor.

The hackers were able to seize control of these accounts by exploiting the loopholes in Twitter's own internal administration tools. "Since the attack, we've significantly limited access to our internal tools and systems to ensure ongoing account security while we complete our investigation," the social network said in a statement.

While it may be obvious to some that the tweets promising to double your Bitcoin were a scam, the attackers were still able to reportedly run off with more than $100,000.

What makes the situation more complicated is that cryptocurrencies are extremely hard to track. The accounts which were used to accommodate the transactions were emptied out before they could be identified.

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