Centre Issues Notice To Twitter Seeking Details Of Bitcoin Scam, Indian Users Affected

In the Bitcoin scam on Twitter, accounts of former US President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, were hacked into.

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New Delhi: India's cybersecurity nodal agency Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has sent a notice to Twitter to seek full details of the recent global hack that targetted popular users, a source revealed.  The agency has asked the micro-blogging platform about complete information on the number of Indian users that have been affected as well as its impact on data. The source aware of the development told news agency Press Trust of India that CERT-In has asked Twitter about the number of users from India who clicked on the malicious links and whether the affected users have been informed about the unauthorised access to their Twitter accounts. The government has also sought information on the vulnerability exploited by hackers, modus operandi of the attack and the actions taken by Twitter to deal with the impact. Twitter was not immediately available for response. On Wednesday, Cyber attackers had hacked into the Twitter accounts of international high profile users - including former US President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden as well as many entrepreneurs like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in a Bitcoin scam. Mumbai Cyber had soon after released a list of precautions that users need to follow, citing the likelihood of similar cyber attacks targetting Indian celebrity profiles as well. The officials expressed concerns that such a coordinated attack can be used to spread misinformation and hate speech. The precautions to be followed are: • Do not blindly trust content posted on social media platforms. Take your time to determine if the content posted is truthful or fake. • Do not spread or further circulate any posts that seem like fake news or rumours, or promoting hate speech and any kind of violence. • Do not fall for cryptocurrency scams that are widespread on social media. • Follow good cybersecurity practices like using strong passwords, changing passwords frequently, and using 2-factor authentication. • Citizens can also report any security problems in their social media accounts to the support center of the respective social media platform. • Report any suspicious incident to your nearest police station or on www.cybercrime.gov.in . (With Agency Inputs)