Twitter confirmed on Thursday that an account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal website was hacked with a series of tweets asking its followers to donate to a relief fund through cryptocurrency.
The group known as John Wick has claimed the responsibility for the hacking the website. Twitter said it was aware of the activity with Modi’s website account and has taken steps to secure it.
The tweets, which have since been taken down, asked the followers to donate to the PM National Relief Fund through cryptocurrency.
“We’re aware of this activity and have taken steps to secure the compromised account. We are actively investigating the situation. At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted. Advice on keeping your account secure can be found,” according to a Twitter official.
In series of tweets after the takeover of the verified handle, the hacker put out messages seeking donations to the Prime Minister’s relief fund for Covid-19 using bitcoins. “This account is hacked by John Wick (hckindia@tutanota.com), We have not hacked Paytm Mall,” the message said.
The incident comes after several Twitter accounts of prominent personalities were hacked in July.
On August 30, cybersecurity firm Cyble had claimed hacker group John Wick was behind a “massive” data breach at Paytm Mall, the e-commerce arm of unicorn Paytm. Cyble had claimed the hacker group had access to the company’s database, which was denied by Paytm.
In July, a hacker group had taken over the internal controls of Twitter compromising the accounts of popular verified users such as Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, and Elon Musk and put out messages seeking donation using bitcoin.