The Twitter account of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “briefly compromised” on Sunday, his office said.
Modi’s account – whose name is @narendramodi – tweeted after midnight that India had officially adopted Bitcoin as legal tender which, based on the timing of the announcement, has led to a suspicion of a hack and has also suggested New Delhi in recent months that it be will be the case imagine a strict law regulating cryptocurrency. Late last month, the country’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, said New Delhi had no proposal to recognize Bitcoin as the country’s currency.
Sunday’s tweet, which has since been deleted, included a link to a sketchy website and said New Delhi had bought some bitcoins and was planning to distribute them among the country’s residents.
Prime Minister Modi’s office tweeted Sunday that Modi’s account was fully secured and any tweets shared during that period should be “ignored”.
With over 73 million followers on Twitter, Modi is one of the most popular accounts on the social network. Twitter and the prime minister’s office said the social network took the necessary steps to secure the account once it learned of the activity.
It wasn’t clear who had hacked the account. The sketchy blog that was linked to was not accessible at the time of publication.
