NEW DELHI—Indian officers are investigating how Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s
account was hacked, with a tweet to his greater than 73 million followers falsely saying India was adopting bitcoin as authorized tender and distributing it to individuals within the nation.
The account was briefly compromised earlier than being secured, the prime minister’s office said on Twitter. The problem had been escalated to Twitter Inc., and the tweet must be ignored, the workplace mentioned.
Twitter mentioned its methods weren’t breached within the hack. The corporate has round the clock strains of communication open with the prime minister’s workplace and secured Mr. Modi’s account “as quickly as we grew to become conscious of this exercise,” a Twitter spokeswoman mentioned. A Twitter investigation confirmed no different accounts gave the impression to be affected, she added.
Twitter recommends that to guard their accounts individuals take steps similar to activating two-factor authentication, requiring not only a password but in addition a second type of identification to log in, similar to a code despatched through an app. A spokeswoman declined to offer specifics on the diploma to which Mr. Modi’s account was protected.
An Indian authorities official mentioned rigorous safety measures had been taken to guard the account, and that the investigation would search to look at the IP handle and web service supplier the hacker used to entry the account.
The hack got here after the Indian authorities final month mentioned it might think about a invoice to ban personal cryptocurrencies in India, with some exceptions, and create an official digital foreign money to be issued by the Reserve Financial institution of India, in keeping with a parliamentary bulletin.
In a speech final month, Mr. Modi mentioned that democratic nations ought to work collectively to make sure bitcoin doesn’t find yourself within the fallacious arms, with out elaborating.
The proposed laws, which continues to be evolving, will possible ban using cryptocurrencies as authorized tender in India, in keeping with authorities officers. However New Delhi is contemplating how they is likely to be regulated as an asset class for funding. Officers are monitoring the best way different governments are treating cryptocurrencies and the open-access ledger that underpins them, generally known as the blockchain.
One authorities official mentioned the ultimate invoice would possible be pleasant towards startups and people advocating using new expertise. The proposal to create an official digital foreign money will possible be stored out of the invoice, the official mentioned.
Mr. Modi has one of many world’s most-followed Twitter accounts, with extra followers than U.S. President
Joe Biden,
Tesla Inc. Chief Govt
Elon Musk,
and vogue mogul
Kim Kardashian West.
The tweet from Mr. Modi’s account, later deleted, claimed the federal government had bought 500 bitcoins, a kind of cryptocurrency that has attracted vital funding and hype lately. The tweet contained a hyperlink to a weblog, now inaccessible, that steered bitcoin was being given away.
India’s company for monitoring cybersecurity incidents and threats, the Indian Laptop Emergency Response Staff, is investigating the hack, in keeping with authorities officers with information of the matter.
Digital funds have turn out to be extra widespread within the nation of greater than 1.3 billion lately, with in style providers from the likes of
One97 Communications Ltd.
’s Paytm,
Alphabet Inc.’s
Google, and WhatsApp, the messaging service from Meta Platforms. However whereas cryptocurrency-related startups in India have attracted a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} of funding lately, it’s unclear how widespread their providers could turn out to be within the South Asian nation.
India’s authorities has lately been setting out new guidelines to manipulate U.S. tech giants and promote homegrown champions. It has tightened e-commerce guidelines and desires to higher police dangerous materials on-line. In Might, Indian police visited Twitter’s workplace in New Delhi to analyze the corporate’s labeling of a ruling occasion spokesman’s tweets as deceptive.
A hacker final 12 months broke into Twitter’s methods and gained entry to a number of excessive profile Twitter accounts, together with these belonging to Barack Obama and Invoice Gates, to put up messages requesting cash be despatched to cryptocurrency accounts. A Florida teenager pleaded responsible in March to crimes together with fraud and unauthorized pc entry after prosecutors accused him of imitating a Twitter information-technology worker to achieve entry to the corporate’s networks, bypassing its safety measures.
Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell@wsj.com and Rajesh Roy at rajesh.roy@wsj.com
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