On Monday night, BJP leader Swapan Dasgupta’s Twitter account was hacked by a group of Turkish hackers. Following this, accounts of BJP leaders Ram Madhav and Kiran Bedi, and actor Anupam Kher were among those who were hacked.
On Monday night, Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta’s Twitter account was hacked by a group of Turkish hackers. Following this, accounts of BJP leaders Ram Madhav and Kiran Bedi, and actor Anupam Kher were among those who were hacked.
While Dasgupta’s Twitter handle is yet to be restored, Kher managed to get his account recovered once again. Ram Madhav’s account is yet to be retrieved.
The modus operandi of the hackers is simple. They send a DM to a Twiitter handle, with a link attached. Once the unsuspecting person clicks that, the account is hacked via phishing. Once one account is hacked, it sends out DM to multiple accounts, which lead to further spread of the virus. It appears that upon receiving a DM, Twitter asks you log in again. When one logs in, their account gets compromised.
Anupam Kher tweeted that he had clicked on a DM sent by Swapan Dasgupts which lead to him losing control of the account.
Swapan Dasgupts and Anupam Kher's account tweeted that 'I love Pakistan'.
In response to PTI's query, Bedi said she was on a flight and after landing, she got to know that her Twitter account was hacked.
"...There were concerns on my WhatsApp messages as what kind of terror messages were coming from my Twitter account. I could not even log on to my personal account. The user name has also been hacked," she said in a message. Her account is yet to be restored.
The link, which has created trouble, comes with a message. “Hi, Please read this important news http://the-guardian.tk You can access it from this link by logging in.”
Do not click on this message if you receive it.
According to reports, Turkish 'pro-Pakistan' group is behind the hacked accounts.
Bedi, Madhav, Dasgupta and Kher's Twitter pages had retweeted posts in Turkish that also featured the emoji of Turkey's flag.
Earlier India's Ambassador to UN, Syed Akbaruddin's account was also hacked by Pro-Turkish groups. The modus operandi and nature of Tweets in both cases look eerily similar. And the fact that prominent RW's accounts were attacked this time around point towards an orchestrated effort to attack people from a certain side of political divide.
Meanwhile, Twitter has apologised in an official statement stating, "Our teams are working to resolve an issue affecting a small number of Indian users. We will notify affected account holders directly."
The social networking giant has also urged users not to click on links in 'direct messages' coming from unknown accounts.
BJP's IT department head Amit Malviya cautioned against opening direct messages (DMs) on twitters that look suspicious.
"If you get any link in a DM on Twitter that looks suspicious even if from a known person's account, do not click to open it. Just delete the message. This also applies to Facebook, Whatsapp and mails," he said.
While it is not yet known exactly how and when the accounts were hacked, both Madhav's and Kher's pages had retweeted posts. The posts indicated that the accounts were targeted by 'pro-Pakistan' Turkish cyber army 'Ayyildiz tim'.
Messages with the words "Love Pakistan" were tweeted from some of the hacked accounts.
Interestingly, this hacking incidents occurred on Safer Internet Day, organised each year to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones.
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