India sends notice to Twitter after global hack, demands details of Indian accounts compromised

Written By DNA Web Team | Updated: Jul 18, 2020, 05:42 PM IST

CERT-in swung into action after reports about hacking of Twitter handles of many eminent personalities like U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality television show star Kim Kardashian, former U.S. President Barack Obama, billionaire Elon Musk made the headlines.

The Indian government has sent a notice to social media company Twitter inquiring about the accounts in India caught up in the global hack that happened last week, the sources stated on Saturday.

The government sought answers about how many Indian Twitter accounts were breached. The government also wanted to know that if the Indians were informed about the hack.

The notice was issued by India's cybersecurity nodal agency CERT in Twitter asking for information on the number of Indian users affected, as well as the impact on data.

The government further inquired about the intent of the attack, vulnerability exploited by attackers, and actions taken by Twitter to remedy the situation.

CERT-in swung into action after reports about the hacking of Twitter handles of many eminent personalities like  U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality television show star Kim Kardashian, former U.S. President Barack Obama, billionaire Elon Musk made the headlines.

As Twitter went through the worst-ever cyber attack on any social media platforms, at least 367 users transferred around $1,20,000 (over Rs 90 lakh) to hackers in Bitcoins before the Twitter teams swung into action to stop the cryptocurrency scam that hit several top-notch public profiles.

Twitter admitted it was a "coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools".

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has also apologised after accounts of major public figures were simultaneously hacked by attackers to spread a cryptocurrency scam.

Some high-level employees at Twitter were targeted by Social Engineering campaigns to gain access to high profile accounts.