I&B Ministry's Twitter account hacked, renamed as 'Elon Musk'; restored short while later

In yet another instance of a government handle being hacked, the Twitter account of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting was briefly compromised on Wednesday morning. The profile name was changed to 'Elon Musk' in the meanwhile and some tweets with text such as 'HURRRRY UP!!!', 'GREAT JOB!!' and 'GREATT JOB!!' were posted from this account. Moreover, a couple of tweets contained a link to a website.

These tweets were subsequently deleted. At 10.11 am, the I&B Ministry announced that the issue had been resolved. Taking to Twitter, it stated, "The account @MIB_India has been restored. This is for the information of all the followers". 

I&B Ministry handle compromised: 

Recent incidents of hacking 

A month earlier, PM Narendra Modi's personal Twitter handle too was hacked. In an official release on December 12, the PMO stated, "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". As per the screenshots shared on Twitter by several users, tweets were put out from PM Modi's personal account claiming "India has officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender".

The now-deleted tweet read, "India has officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender. The government has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all residents of the country". This came at a juncture when the Centre was aiming to introduce a bill to regulate cryptocurrency in India. On January 3, the Twitter accounts of the Indian Council of World Affairs and Indian Medical Association were briefly compromised. Just like today's incident, the profile name of these accounts was changed to 'Elon Musk' and a similar type of content was posted.