The Twitter account of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “briefly compromised” on Sunday, his office said.
Modi’s account — whose handle is @narendramodi — tweeted after the midnight that India had officially adopted bitcoin as a legal tender, prompting suspicions about a hack because of the timing of the announcement and also as New Delhi in recent months has suggested that it will be introducing a strict law to regulate cryptocurrency.
The tweet, which included a link to a sketchy website, said New Delhi had purchased some bitcoins that it was planning to distribute among the nation’s residents.
The Prime Minister Modi’s office tweeted on Sunday that Modi’s account had been fully secured and any tweets shared during that period “must be ignored.” Modi, with over 73 million followers on Twitter, is one of the most popular accounts on the social network.
Twitter and Prime Minister’s office said the social network took the necessary steps to secure the account as soon as it became aware of the activity.
It wasn’t clear who had hacked the account. The sketchy blog it linked to was not accessible at the time of publication.