ISLAMABAD: Twitter account of Pakistan’s embassy in Belgrade (Serbia) was on Friday hacked by an unidentified Karachi-based hacker claiming that the mission staff had not been paid salaries for three months amid rising inflation.

“With inflation breaking all previous records, how long do you expect @ImranKhanPTI that we government official will remain silent & keep working for you without been paid for past 3 months & our children been forced out of school due to non-payment of fees. Is this #NayaPakistan?,” the tweet read.

The tweet was accompanied by Saad Alvi’s music video mocking Prime Minister Imran Khan statement Aap ney ghabrana nahin.

“I am sorry @ImranKhanPTI, am not left with another option,” read another tweet.

FO regrets frivolous activity through account of Serbia mission

As the messages from the official account soon got viral, the Foreign Office said the account had been hacked.

The hacker soon afterwards also hacked embassy’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

The hacking took place at 9.59am on Friday, whereas the messages were posted an hour later from Karachi, the embassy said. The IP address, it said, was being shared with “relevant quarters” in Pakistan for investigating the matter.

Denying the claim about non-payment of salaries, the FO statement explained it was a “baseless and un-factual” post. “This is totally false and far from reality,” it said.

The accounts were retrieved in the afternoon and the posts were deleted.

Later, Pakistan’s embassy in Serbia also said the account had been hacked and a ‘baseless’ tweet was posted on it from a device in Karachi, adds Dawn.com.

“The Twitter account of the Embassy of Pakistan [in] Belgrade, Serbia (@PakinSerbia) was hacked and logged in from a Chrome desktop on a Windows device in Karachi, Pakistan at 0559 hours local time (09:59 PST),” a statement issued by the embassy said, adding that a message was posted from the hacked account at 6:59am local time (10:59 PST), which was not from the embassy.

“After the hacking of the Twitter account, a baseless and unfactual post was [...] made regarding the non-payment of salaries. This was totally false and far from reality.”

According to the embassy, all of its employees are paid their salaries regularly, “and there is no disruption in the education of the children of [its] officers and staff”.

“The embassy is receiving funds from Islamabad on a regular basis,” the statement read.

It added that the embassy “does not take any responsibility for the above-mentioned posts and deeply regrets the frivolous activity generated through the hacked account”.

The statement further said the embassy’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were also hacked apparently using the same device from which its Twitter account was hacked. “The Twitter account was retrieved at 0911 hours local time (13:11 PST),” it said, adding that the IP address of the device used for hacking it was being shared with relevant quarters in Pakistan for further investigation into the matter.

Earlier this week, data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics showed inflation edged up to 11.5pc from 9.2pc, the highest increase noted in the past 20 months influenced by a record hike in fuel prices in October.

The massive rupee depreciation fuelled import-led inflation. Inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased to its highest level in 20 months.

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2021