David Bridges
On Friday (October 14), unidentified hackers broke into the official Twitter handle of the ‘Indian Embassy in Ireland’ and took complete control of the account for a few hours.
The miscreants changed the profile picture to that of SpaceX rockets and the handle name to ‘Elon Musk’ from ‘India in Ireland (Embassy of India, Dublin).’ Interestingly, they did not change the Twitter username (@IndiainIreland) as it would have led to the immediate loss of the verified status (blue tick).
Soon after, the compromised Twitter handle posted a tweet about Bitcoin and pinned it on its profile. In a tweet, it said, “It’s time to pump BTC. To support our community, I’m announcing 5.000 BTC and 5.000 ETH (Ethereum) giveaway.”
“First come. First served…Note: You can receive a gift only once. Please hurry up,” the handle added. The hacked account also posted a shady link and asked people to visit the site.
However, soon after, the Indian officials were able to take control of the Twitter account of ‘Indian Embassy in Ireland.’ The display picture, banner and pin tweet were promptly removed. The original name of the Twitter handle was also restored.
At the time of writing, the Indian embassy did not issue a clarification about the security breach on the micro-blogging platform.
Last year, billionaire and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk promoted a meme-based cryptocurrency named Dogecoin, which started out as a joke. Musk’s endorsement saw its value jump up by 26000% within a 6-month period.
While bitcoin has a capped supply of 21 million coins, there is no limit to the number of dogecoins that can be created. The Tesla CEO had described the cryptocurrency as his “favourite.”
Hence, it is not surprising that the hackers impersonated as Elon Musk to sell bitcoins, knowing that his large-fan following is well acquainted with his interest in cryptocurrencies.
Maya Kensington
Troy Sanders
