BJP chief JP Nadda’s Twitter account was briefly hacked today (February 27) in the morning. While the account was hacked, the hacker asked for cryptocurrency donations for Russia amidst the Russia-Ukraine war. Notably, his account was restored after a short period of time. The now-deleted tweet asked for donations in Bitcoin and Ethereum for Russia. Also Read – Twitter tips: How to add content warning on multimedia tweets
As per the tweet, “Stand with the people of Russia. Now accepting cryptocurrency donations. Bitcoin and Ethereum.” Additionally, a tweet in Hindi was also shared that asked viewers to stand with the people of Ukraine. Now accepting cryptocurrency donations. Two links were shared for the said donations in the pinned tweet. Also Read – YouTube, Twitter, Facebook prohibit ads due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Also Read – Ukraine wages social media war against Russia
After this, a tweet in Hindi apologising and announced that the account was hacked. This tweet also read, “Donate for Russia, as it needs our help”. These tweets were deleted minutes later.
BJP national president JP Nadda’s Twitter account hacked. pic.twitter.com/AdZ3fh7pd3
— ANI (@ANI) February 27, 2022
This was not the first time that a politician’s account was hacked. Last year in December, PM Narendra Modi’s account was also hacked, where the hackers tweeted claiming that “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. Hurry up. The future has come today!.” The government’s cybersecurity wing CERT-In ordered a high-level inquiry for this incident.
Yes PM modi twitter handle @narendramodi got hacked for few minutes. pic.twitter.com/3V19vqsPQN
— Facts check (@Facts_chek) December 11, 2021
Responding to the hacking incident, Twitter issued an official statement saying, “We have 24×7 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.”
On the other hand, with escalated Russia-Ukraine conflict, Twitter has announced to ban Russian media outlets from running ads on the platform “to ensure critical public safety information is elevated and ads don’t detract from it.”