Hacked Indian Official Twitter Accounts Posted NFT Advertisements

A series of cyberattacks breached multiple Twitter accounts associated with the administrative and legislative bodies of India in the past few days.

NFT-related content that promoted a project called “Azuki” was posted on the compromised accounts, making people speculate that the hackers were conducted by the same individuals or entities.

• The most recent victim came from the Twitter account owned by the Punjab unit of the Indian Congress – Punjab Congress. The breach rendered the account posting more than 100 tweets within minutes, tagging random accounts supposedly related to activities around NFTs and cryptocurrencies.
• Last Saturday, the official account associated with UP Chief Minister’s Office was compromised, with the old profile picture being replaced by a “bored ape” and hundreds of new tweets – likely created by bots – being posted to promote an NFT project called “Azuki NFT.”
• On Monday, the State Government’s account was hacked as well. The attackers also tweeted about the same NFT project and tempted people to participate in “Azuki Airdrops.”
• All the hacks stated above were reportedly carried out by the same individuals or organization since the perpetrators posted largely similar tweets about NFTs and changed all the pinned messages to the same promotional content for “Beanz Official Collection.”

“We have decided to give back to our community by distributing extra airdrop claims to holders of Azuki and other NFTs. Claim your airdrop of BEANZ and become involved with the Azuki ecosystem using the interactive Azuki NFT.”

• It’s worth noting that all compromised accounts were soon restored after the breaches.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account was hacked last December, with the attackers announcing that India had “formally recognized bitcoin as legal tender.” The tweet was quickly deleted after the account was restored. Twitter claimed the compromise was not due to any breaches of its system.