Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter Account Hacked Promoting BTC Giveaway Scam

Over the last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s account was compromised while promoting a Bitcoin giveaway scam. The tweet coming from the official Narendra Modi Twitter profile, has been now removed, read: “India has officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender. The government has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all residents in the country”.

The tweet also contained a link to the website promoting a Bitcoin giveaway scam. Interestingly, the hack happens just days after India has been working on pro-crypto measures.

The officials soon took notice of the matter and escalated it further to Twitter. Prime Minister Modi’s account was soon restored and the bitcoin scam tweet was deleted.

Later on, the official Twitter handle of PMO India appraised about the incident. The tweet coming from PMO India read: “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”.

This is not for the first time that a Twitter handle to PM Modi has been compromised. Last year in September 2020, the handle of his personal website with tweets promoting Bitcoin scam. However, political figures from around the world have been a target of hackers promoting Bitcoin giveaway scams.

Last year in July 2020, Twitter handles of some of the popular U.S. politicians including now President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and many others were compromised.

India, led by PM Modi, has been currently working on introducing regulatory measures for the use of digital assets in the country. While India would allow the use of cryptocurrencies as an asset class, it won’t allow it to be used as a means of payments and settlements.

PM Modi has recently called out for collective efforts by all democracies to shape common global norms for emerging technologies such as digital assets thereby making sure that they “empower” democracies and not “undermine it”.

The Indian government is currently discussing its crypto bill in the ongoing parliamentary session. It seeks to form a proper regulatory framework for the use of digital assets.