Twitter account of PM Narendra Modi's personal website hacked

New Delhi/Bengaluru: A Twitter account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal website appeared to be hacked early on Thursday with a series of tweets requesting its followers to donate to a relief fund through cryptocurrency, which was subsequently taken down.

The incident comes after several Twitter accounts of prominent personalities were hacked in July.

Twitter said it was aware of the activity with Modi's website account and has taken steps to secure it. "We are actively investigating the situation. At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted," a Twitter spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

Modi's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the tweets posted on the account @narendramodi_in. The account, with over 2.5 million followers, is the official Twitter handle for Modi's personal website (https://www.narendramodi.in/) and the Narendra Modi mobile application.

Modi's personal Twitter account, which was unaffected by this incident, has over 61 million followers.

The tweets, which have since been taken down, asked the followers to donate to the PM National Relief Fund through cryptocurrency.

"I appeal to you all to donate generously to PM National Relief Fund for Covid-19, Now India begin with crypto currency, Kindly Donate eth to 0xae073DB1e5752faFF169B1ede7E8E94bF7f80Be6," one tweet read.

"This account is hacked by John Wick (hckindia@tutanota.com), We have not hacked Paytm Mall," another bogus tweet read.

"Yes this account is hacked by John Wick (hckindia@tutanota.com), We have not hacked Paytm Mall," the final one read.

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 also demanded ransom, as it had got unrestricted access to the firm's database. Paytm had, however, said it had not found any data breach during an investigation.

Hackers had in July accessed Twitter's internal systems to hijack some of the platform's top voices including US presidential candidate Joe Biden, former US President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk, and used them to solicit digital currency.

Following the major security breach, India's cyber security nodal agency CERT-In had, in July, issued notice to Twitter asking the micro-blogging platform for full details of the global hack targeting high-profile users.

The Indian government had then demanded information of vulnerability exploited by attackers and modus operandi of the attack and sought details of remedial actions taken by Twitter to mitigate the impact of the hacking incident, according to a PTI report.

In August, officials said a 17-year-old Florida boy masterminded the hacking of celebrity accounts on Twitter Inc. A 19-year-old British man and a 22-year-old man in Orlando, Florida were also charged under US federal law with aiding the attack.

(With inputs from Reuters and PTI)