Indian prime minister’s Twitter account ‘very briefly compromised’

The Twitter account of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “very briefly compromised,” the Office of the Prime Minister of India tweeted on Saturday.

“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,” the office said on Twitter.

A screenshot posted by several Twitter users showed a post on Modi’s account, which appears to have been hacked at the time, saying that bitcoin was being adopted as legal tender.

“India has officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender,” said the post, which also included a hyperlink. “The government has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all residents of the country.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Twitter said the social media platform had taken steps to resolve the issue.

“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,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

It was unclear how the Twitter account was hacked or for how long. Modi has over 73 million followers on the social media platform.

According to Twitter, its investigation into the matter so far indicates that the hack into Modi’s account was not caused by a breach of any of the social media platform’s systems.