A Tory Cabinet minister faces embarrassment after her Twitter page was hacked.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan’s account started posting tweets promoting cryptocurrency.
Her profile picture was also changed to an image of the site’s billionaire owner Elon Musk.
At around 7:30pm on Christmas Day, Mrs Keegan’s account began replying to tweets with messages about dogecoin, a type of cryptocurrency.
The posts promoted a fake event it claimed would be hosted by Mr Musk's companies Twitter and Tesla.
The messages said that there will be "a special giveaway for all our fans and the crypto community".
“To celebrate Christmas Elon is hosting a new thing,” the tweets said. “Get yourself a chance to win BIG.”
“To celebrate Christmas Elon is hosting a new thing,” the tweets said. “Get yourself a chance to win BIG.”
“Take part in the event,” added the messages posted from Mrs Keegan’s account to her 28,300 Twitter followers.
The tweets were eventually taken down, but more than 12 hours after the hack began the Education Secretary’s profile picture remained the image of Mr Musk.
The breach will raise fresh concerns about Cabinet ministers’ internet security. It comes after it emerged Liz Truss ’s mobile was hacked by Russia.
Agents working for Vladimir Putin are believed to have successfully accessed her personal phone during the Tory leadership campaign this summer when she was foreign secretary.
It was reported that private messages between Ms Truss and international allies, including about the Ukraine war, fell into foreign hands.
In July, hackers took over the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the British Army and used them to promote fake cryptocurrency giveaway schemes.
Mrs Keegan, who is the Tory MP for Chichester, was appointed as a Cabinet minister by Rishi Sunak in October. She was previously a junior minister in the Foreign Office and Department of Health.
Dogecoin was launched as a joke in 2013 and was designed to mock Bitcoin, but it soared in value after being tweeted about by Mr Musk.
The price of the cryptocurrency, also known as DOGE, went up by 18,000%, before it dramatically fell again.
Since making his $44bn (£38bn) takeover of Twitter in October, Mr Musk has spoken about his wish to crack down on spam, bots, and other dangerous or fraudulent content.
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