Centre issues notice to Twitter over high-profile hacks by Bitcoin scammers

Days after Twitter informed that about 130 accounts were hacked during this week's cyberattack that also targeted some high-profile handles on the platform, the Government of India has issued notice to the company to seek details of the same.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, has asked Twitter to furnish full details of the global hack, the number of Indian users affected and data impacted, sources told news agency PTI on Saturday.

This comes a day after the Maharashtra Cyber Cell issued an official advisory asking social media users to remain vigilant in the backdrop of the massive cyberattack on Twitter on July 16. Maharashtra's Cyber Cell, which is also the state's nodal agency for cybersecurity and crime investigation, urged users to remain cautious and not blindly trust content posted on social media. The investigation team further asked users to refrain from sharing and circulating posts which they may feel are fake or those which promote hate speech.

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Twitter accounts hacked by Bitcoin scammers

On June 16, a number of high-profile celebrities with verified Twitter accounts fell prey to Bitcoin hackers in one of Twitter's worst security breaches in its history. Accounts of prominent personalities along with the likes of former US President Barack Obama, billionaire entrepreneurs Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, rapper Kanye West and US Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden, were hacked by Bitcoin scammers, who circulated spam messages from their profiles asking people to donate money to a Bitcoin wallet address embedded as a link. 

Twitter said that it believes the hacking was a coordinated “social engineering attack” as they successfully targeted some of the employees with access to internal systems and tools. The hackers used the access to take control of many highly-visible and verified accounts and tweet on their behalf. America's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is reportedly leading the probe into attack on Twitter. According to media reports, over $100,000 worth of Bitcoins was scammed from users during the security attack.

'Tough day'

Following the attack, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had posted, "Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened. Love(Blue emoji) to our teammates working hard to make this right."

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