Our Bureau Air India’s Twitter handle was hacked late Wednesday night, and restored on Thursday morning. It was not immediately known from which country the hacking occurred.

Twitter reached out to Air India (AI) around 2 am, pointing out that there was unusual activity in its account. Later, it was discovered that five different login attempts were made into the AI Twitter handle.

As a result of the hacking, several AI vendors received messages from the account, asking them to see the message that the airline was sending. Some of the vendors contacted AI to verify the message and then realised that it was an attempt to get into their systems as well.

Air India became active on Twitter in 2014 and currently has about 1.5 lakh followers.

When the handle was hacked, there were messages posted in Turkish language to mislead passengers, an AI spokesperson said, adding that the content hence had been removed.

“Last minute important announcement. All our flights have been cancelled. From now only we will fly with Turkish Airlines,” said a tweet along with the logo of Turkish Airline. All AI flights are operating normally.

The hacking comes a week before AI launches its thrice-a-week Delhi-Tel Aviv non-stop flight, made possible by Saudi Arabia allowing the airline to fly through its air space. Earlier, Saudi Arabia did not allow airlines to fly through its air space en route to Israel. Relations between Israel and Turkey have been rocky for a while now.

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