The Twitter account of the Union Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation has hacked on Thursday, March 17, 2022. People who hacked into Twitter changed the handle’s name to Elon Musk.
The official picture of the account was also taken down, and a picture of the entrepreneur was put on to confuse the followers.
When the account was hacked, the hacker tweeted a link to something that looked like it might be dangerous to click.
A “unique chance” to become rich, the tweet said. “There are more than $7,200,000 in the mystery box that can be won,” says the teacher.
READ MORE: Twitter begins testing the ‘Shops’ feature in order to boost ecommerce.
As Mint said in its report, hackers have been commenting on other Twitter users’ tweets. The Ministry is said to have changed the password for the account. The Delhi Police’s cybercrime team also heard about it.
Soon, the account was back up. As of right now, Twitter hasn’t officially said what caused the hack. However, experts say there could be many reasons for the attack.
Expert Pavan Duggal told Mint that India’s stance at the UN on the Russia-Ukraine conflict had made the country a target for hackers. He said that more people might do this.
Lawyer Duggal said that India hadn’t done very much on cyber security. Because India doesn’t have a law specifically about cyber security, it is easy for people to attack.
In the last few years, the number of hacking cases involving Twitter has increased a lot. Narendra Modi’s personal Twitter account was “very briefly” hacked in December 2021.
In September 2020, Modi’s personal website’s Twitter handle, @narendramodi in, was also taken down.
During that time, hackers sent out a series of tweets asking people who were following them to donate to a fund for people the storm had hurt. They asked people to use bitcoin to donate.
