India's Cybersecurity Agency Issues Notice To Twitter After Bitcoin Scammers Hacked Accounts Of High-Profile Users

Days after Twitter accounts of high profile users including Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Elon Musk were hacked by the Bitcoin scammers, India's cybersecurity agency has issued a notice to the micro-blogging platform asking full details of the global hack and number of Indian users affected by it, reports Times of India.

According to the report, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), which is India's cybersecurity nodal agency, under the IT ministry has asked Twitter to also provide information on number of Indian users who have visited the malicious tweets and links, and whether they have been informed by the platform about the unauthorised access to their twitter accounts.

Besides, information on the vulnerability exploited by the hackers and modus operandi of the cyber attack has also been demanded.

The agency has also sought details of remedial actions taken by Twitter to mitigate the impact of the hacking incident.

According to the report, CERT-In swung into action after the hackers on Wednesday (15 July) gained access into Twitter accounts of global high-profile users including former US president Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk among others.

After gaining access to their accounts, the hackers sent tweets offering $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.

According to the reports, more than 373 users fell for the scam globally, losing over $110,000 before Twitter stepped in to remove the tweets.