The Twitter account of India’s permanent representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin was briefly hacked on Sunday, following which two photographs of Pakistan’s flag and their President Mamnoon Hussain were posted from it.
The pictures were posted during the wee hours of Sunday, and also the “blue tick” that marks a verified account also disappeared at the time.
However, the account was later restored along with the blue tick and the two photographs were also removed.
Around 12 noon, the handle tweeted a message from Akbaruddin: I'm back. It will take more than a hack to keep me down. Thanks to @TwitterIndia & many others who helped.
The tweets remained on the page for over an hour before they were deleted by Twitter based on a complaint by Akbaruddin. Twitter also blocked access to the account.
In 2016, almost 200 government websites were hacked in India, according to data from the Ministry of Home Affairs. In fact, more than 700 websites associated with the Indian government were hacked from 2013 to 2016.
