After PM Modi, Twitter accounts of ICWA, IMA hacked & renamed to 'Elon Musk'

Twitter’s security worries continued on Sunday as hackers took control of the Twitter handles of the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), Indian Medical Association (IMA) and Mann Deshi Mahila Bank (a Microfinance Bank). The alleged hackers took over the official accounts and reshared several questionable posts after renaming the handles as 'Elon Musk'. Earlier in December, a similar incident had taken place when hackers cracked into Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal Twitter handle and made tweets claiming India to have officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender. 

Similar to the hacking of PM Modi’s account, tweets posted on the accounts of ICWA, IMA and Mann Deshi Mahila Bank were all promoting cryptocurrency. The hackers used the accounts to reshare several of the Tesla CEO’s tweets about cryptocurrencies as well as make several new ones claiming to be the billionaire himself. According to sources, the hacking could be a result of the password being compromised or a malicious link being clicked by the account users.

^{Screengrab from IMA Twitter handle}

The hackers took over the accounts on Sunday night. While the Twitter account of ICWA was recovered and switched back to normal, malicious tweets remain on the accounts of the Indian Medical Association and the Mann Deshi Mahila Bank. The account of IMA changed its display picture to default soon after the hacking and the handle’s name was switched back to a dot, hinting that the account was being recovered. The hacking of the Indian Council of World Affairs account remains a concern as it is an 'Institute of National Importance' and has the Vice-President as the ex-officio president. The matter is now being looked into by CERT-IN, the IT security group of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

PM Modi's personal Twitter account compromised

PM Modi's personal Twitter handle was briefly hacked on December 12 as it was informed by the PM's office. Taking to Twitter, PMO stated, "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."

As per the screenshots shared on Twitter by several users, tweets were put out from PM Modi's personal account claiming "India has officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender". The then-deleted tweet read, "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". Previously in 2020, PM Modi's official website's Twitter account @narendramodi_in was compromised and later restored after Twitter probed into the situation. 

Image: Unsplash/ Pixabay/ AP