Rahul Gandhi is the latest public figure to fall prey to hackers. His Twitter account — @OfficeofRG — has been hacked and it is tweeting fairly sensational stuff, at least in terms of language. The tweets contain abuses, talk of corruption within the Gandhi family, call Rahul names and do some trash talking. Although given the fact that Rahul is a big public figure, the tweets were generating some serious amount of buzz on the social media site.
Update: Rahul Gandhi's team has categorically told India Today that the account was hacked.
There is a report that Rahul's office has acknowledged the account has been hacked and that the staffers will file a complaint with the Delhi Police cyber cell. Rahul's team has also apparently got in touch with the Twitter India team.
Whoever took control of the account changed the Rahul's bio to “the Official account of Retard Gandhi” and pinned a tweet that said:
While the account was hacked around 8.40pm, it seems that Rahul's social media took the note of it around 15 minutes later. After that we saw some fight between the hacker(s) and Rahul's social team. Even as many tweets were deleted, the hackers apparently kept updating the provide with more tweets.
The fact that Rahul's Twitter account has been possibly hacked is also an embarrassing moment for his social media team. Currently it looks that Gandhi's account has been hacked, although there is also a possibility that someone else may have got into the account not by hacking but by gaining access to password through some other means.
It is not clear how someone took the control of Rahul's Twitter account but this is not the first time it has happened with a public celebrity. Given his image and stature, Rahul seems like an obvious target for a number of people. Politicians and important Twitter accounts have been hacked earlier. In some cases the hackers have intentions to embarrass or damage the public figures while in others — most notably accounts of big tech CEOs hacked by OurMine, a security firm — the intention is to showcase that the security of important Twitter accounts is weak.
More images from Rahul Gandhi's account.
Usually, important Twitter accounts need to be used with two-factor authentication that makes it difficult for hackers to gain control of an account. But often people are either not tech savvy enough or are just plain too lazy to use the two-factor authentication.
