PM's account hacked

The hacking of Prime Minister Modi’s Twitter account, even if for a brief period, and that too for the second time in less than two years, is not only a serious cyber security transgression, but a breach of trust as well. The exhibition of their reach and ability to cause mischief is a clear reminder of the threats and dangers the disrupters pose, as also the mounting challenge of sanitising technology platforms. If last year, the PM’s account — a prolific tweeter with the most number of followers among any world leader — was compromised with a tweet urging people to donate to a fake Covid relief fund, Sunday’s message said that India has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender and would distribute it to all its citizens. That the incident comes as the country prepares to crack down on a booming cryptocurrency trade points to the vulnerabilities of the cyber world, where the battle against hacking requires constant monitoring, upscaling and quick-fix redressal.

A prompt ‘full-scale’ inquiry by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology notwithstanding, initial investigations sound a warning for the cyber security grid. The one-off targeted attack followed a different pattern as compared to last year’s global hack of accounts of world leaders. Twitter has ruled out any breach at its end and how it has ‘24x7 open lines of communication with the PM’s Office’, but questions will be asked on how the account was not flagged for breach by its automated systems when someone else tried to log in.

In July last year, the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Elon Musk, among others, sent out identical messages that if people sent Bitcoins on a certain link, they would double the money. The tweets were removed, but some of the accounts sent out these tweets again just hours later in the mass breach. It was termed a ‘coordinated social engineering attack’. Infringements with global ramifications require coordinated counter-efforts, with tech giants mandated to be at the forefront.

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