IMD’s Twitter handle hacked, restored later

This comes at a time when the IMD handle has been attracting a lot of traffic due to the ongoing intense heatwave in parts of India.

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IMD Director-General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra informed about the cyber attack.

The official Twitter account of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) was hacked on Saturday. However, the account was restored after a few hours, IMD tweeted.

Twitter Account (@Indiametdept) of India Meteorological Department had been hacked this evening. It has now been restored. @PIB_India @moesgoi @DDNewslive

— . (@Indiametdept) April 9, 2022

The IMD said in a statement issued on Saturday night: “Official Twitter account (@Indiametdept) of India Meteorological Department (IMD) has been hacked about an hour ago. All the tweets from this account should be ignored till its restoration.”

The hackers had then put up a tweet directed towards NFT (non-fungible tokens) traders. The tweet saying “In celebration for the reveal of the Beanz Official Collection, we have opened up an airdrop to all active NFT traders in the community for the next 2 hours!” was pinned to the profile. The profile picture had been removed and several tweets were put out tagging multiple handles. The profile has 246.6k followers.

A screengrab of the post by the hacker on the IMD twitter page.

While earlier tweets from the handle were no longer visible on Saturday night, images tweeted by the IMD, including a list of maximum temperatures at different weather stations on Friday, were visible.

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