NDRF’s Twitter Account Briefly Hacked, Probe Underway

The official Twitter handle of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was briefly hacked and a probe is underway, an official said.

New Delhi: The official Twitter handle of the National Disaster Response Force was briefly hacked on late Saturday (January 22). A senior officer of the force said on Sunday that technical experts were looking into the issue and the handle will be restored soon, according to a report by news agency PTI.

The handle ‘@NDRFHQ’ briefly posted some random messages and the already published messages were not loading. However, the official display photo and bio of the federal force was visible.

The NDRF was raised in 2006 as a federal contingency force against natural and man-made disasters and it celebrated its 17th Raising Day on January 19.

Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter handle was “very briefly compromised” after it shared a post on bitcoin, Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a statement. In a tweet, PMO said the Twitter account of PM Modi was secured later and any tweet shared during the period must be ignored.

“The Twitter handle of PM @narendramodi was very briefly compromised. The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account has been immediately secured. In the brief period that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored,” PMO India tweeted.

Twitter had then released a statement on PM Modi’s account being “briefly compromised”. “We have 24X7 open lines of communication with the PM’s Office & our teams took necessary steps to secure the compromised account as soon as we became aware of this activity. Our probe revealed that there’re no signs of any other impacted accounts at this time,” Twitter said in the statement.