Indian Ambassador’s Twitter Account Hacked
The official Twitter account of one of India’s top ambassadors to the United Nations was taken over for a short period of time by suspected Turkish hackers last week.
The cyber criminals claimed to be from the Turkish hacking group known as Ayyıldız Tim and managed to take over the account of the president of the World Economic Forum’s over the weekend as well.
Two pictures of the Pakistani flag and a photo of Pakistan’s current president, Mamnoon Hussain, were posted on the India’s representative to the United Nations, Syed Akbaruddin’s Twitter account, after which the account’s Twitter handle @AkbaruddinIndia was transformed to @AkbaruddinSyed .
The ambassador’s blue verification badge also disappeared after the changing of the username.
The hackers posted a tweet in both Turkish and English confirming the hacking of the account, also threatening to demonstrate the power of the ‘Turk’.
The cyber hacking group also taunted by reportedly tweeting a link to a 1950s Bollywood song.
The Indian ambassador’s account was briefly blocked and later restored, after Twitter was made aware of the attack.
The offending tweets were taken down after the recovery process and the blue verification tick was later restored.
The ambassador, Syed Akbaruddinm seemed unshook and confident when he came back with the punchline ‘I’m back’, while further challenging the culprits that a mere cyber attack will not be enough to keep him from expressing his views to the world.
The Turkish cyber crime group has previously claimed the responsibilities for the hacking of the Twitter account of Greece’s Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, the official website of the US Department of Defense, Microsoft Bosnia’s site and quite a few websites in Israel, Canada and the Netherlands.
