The official handle of the Telugu Desam Party(TDP), the Opposition party in Andhra Pradesh, on microblogging site Twitter has been reportedly hacked. The party appears to have lost control of the account which is followed by more than half-a-million users.
The account has been reportedly hacked in the early hours of March 19 and hundreds of replies were to a tweet by SpaceX about their space vehicle Starship. The replies were apparently sent by a bot a.k.a a web robot as all of them was sent at 2.23 a.m. on Saturday. The profile picture of the account was also removed.
Earlier, the handle name was changed to Elon Musk and his picture was set as a profile picture for a brief period. TDP national general secretary and former Minister Nara Lokesh acknowledged that the account has been hacked and that attempts to restore it were being made.
"Kindly note that our official party account @Jaitdp has been hacked by nefarious elements. We are working with @TwitterIndia to restore the account," Mr. Lokesh said in a tweet on Saturday morning.