Temporarily Hacked, Restored: Ministry Of Jal Shakti's Twitter Account

During the early hours of Thursday, the official Twitter account of Ministry of Jal Shakti was temporarily hacked and showed abnormal activities.

A tweet pertaining to Sui, a layer 1 blockchain, was first posted at 5:38 am. The tweet aimed at promoting Sui Wallet and urged its followers to join testnests. The ministry account's profile picture was also changed from the Indian flag to Sui's logo along with its cover image being changed to show Sui's logo and name. The original tweet by the ministry's handle was quote tweeted for more than 8,878 times and also tagged numerous unknown accounts.

The account showed hacking activities till its last retweet at around 8:30 am. The original tweet and the quoted tweets stand deleted with the profile picture being restored. The ministry has not released an official statement at the time of publishing this article. Prima facie, it seems like an act of a third party, separate from Sui and ministry who undertook this unauthorized activity.

This comes days after India's premium medical institute and hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences in the national capital, experienced a cyber attack on November 23. The attack compromised sensitive information and e-records of millions of patients. Since then, for seven consecutive days, the hospital has been providing services and support manually. As a contingency plan, the hospital has shut down its servers, networks and computers along with having the anti-virus updated. Data of ongoing patients along with integral research and studies have been lost.

According to the news wire agency the Press Trust of India, hackers have kept a ransom demand of INR 200 crore in cryptocurrency.

The attacks and hacking come as a means of promoting or engaging in the new technologies of Web3, blockchain and cryptocurrency.