Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter Account Briefly Hacked, Restored

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Twitter account was hacked at around 3 in the morning today (December 12). It was restored later.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Twitter account (@narendramodi) was compromised briefly at around 3 in the morning today (December 12). The prime minister's account posted a message declaring bitcoin a legal tender in India.

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) posted a message at 3:18 am "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."

PM Modi has 73,414,516 followers on his account. Twitter restored the account swiftly and said, "We have 24X7 open lines of communication with the PM's Office and our teams took necessary steps to secure the compromised account as soon as we became aware of this activity. Our investigation has revealed that there are no signs of any other impacted accounts at this time."

This is the second time in less than 16 months that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's account has been hacked. In September last year, a Twitter account linked to the prime minister's personal website and app had sent out Tweets asking for donations to the Prime Minister's Covid relief fund through cryptocurrency.

Around the same time last year, Twitter accounts of many foreign politicians and famous personalities were hacked. In July last year, the Twitter accounts of former US President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent out the same tweets which said if people sent bitcoins on a certain link, they would double their investment.