‘John Wick’: How Keeanu Reeves’ character inspired hackers targeted PM Modi’s website Twitter handle
The tweets, which have since been taken down, asked the followers to donate to the PM National Relief Fund through cryptocurrency.
Twitter on Thursday said the account linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal website was hacked, and it has now been restored. The account which has over 2.5 million followers is the official Twitter handle for Modi’s personal website as well as the Narendra Modi mobile application.
The tweets, which have since been taken down, asked the followers to donate to the PM National Relief Fund through cryptocurrency.
“Yes, this account is hacked by John Wick (hckindia@tutanota.com), We have not hacked Paytm Mall,” another message had said.
The hacker identified himself as ‘John Wick.’
John Wick is a 2014 American action-thriller film directed by Chad Stahelski and written by Derek Kolstad. The film John Wick stars Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Bridget Moynahan and many other Hollywood stars.
The movie follows the story of an ex-hit-man who comes out of retirement to track down the gangsters that killed his dog and took everything from him.
Part of a three series franchise, it began with the release of John Wick in 2014 followed by two sequels--John Wick: Chapter 2 in 2017, and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum on in 2019.
The hacker chose to use the code name John Wick on September 2 to hack PM Modi’s Twitter account, which happens to be Keanu Reeves’s birthday.
Earlier, many hackers have taken up the name ‘Elliot Alderson’ from Mr.Robot, played by Rami Malek who plays a hacker, but John Wick isn’t shown as a cyber-security expert or a hacker in any of the movies.
On August 30, cybersecurity firm Cyble had said hacker group ‘John Wick’ was behind a data breach at Paytm Mall, the e-commerce unit of Paytm.
Paytm Mall had said it had not found any security lapses after investigating claims of a possible hack and data breach.
