Hackers take control of Indian prime minister's Twitter account to promote bitcoin giveaway scam

The official Twitter account for India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, was briefly taken over by hackers and used to promote a bitcoin giveaway scam. 

The fraudulent message in question said that India had declared bitcoin legal tender and was conducting a giveaway to celebrate the move.

Hacked Indian PM Modi’s Twitter account promotes bitcoin scam: pic.twitter.com/27LCdaW4Zi

— Ben Schaack (@BuyingStrength) December 12, 2021

The prime minister's office later said via its own Twitter account that Modi's account was "briefly compromised" and was later secured. "In the brief period that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored," the office said. 

This is not the first incident that an official Twitter account has been compromised to promote a crypto giveaway scam, though the scale of 2020's site-wide account takeovers was much more significant. As noted by reports, Modi's account was briefly taken over in September 2020 to solicit funds for a fake cryptocurrency donation drive.