A cyber security expert, Dr. Edward Danso-Ansong, has described the hacking of President Mahama’s X account as an ‘account takeover’, emphasizing that it’s a significant incident.
He says the hacking of the President’s account raises a lot of security concerns due to the level of traction it has gained on the international community.
“And for the President’s social media handle to suffer such an incident, it’s a big thing. And I know that this story has run through to all the international media,” he said whilst speaking Ghana Tonight on TV3 Tuesday, March 18, 2025.
According to the Head of Cyber Security Lab at the University of Ghana, Legon, the handlers of the social media accounts of the President should be taken through some training to prevent such incidents from reoccurring.
He says although the accounts of influential personalities with much following have equally been taken over before, extra vigilance needs to be adopted to ensure the country is secured, emphasising that any volatile information from the account could have resulted to something chaotic.
“Years back, we saw a similar thing happening. And we thought that a lot more of education and training has gone into it to ensure that such a thing does not reoccur. So for a platform such as this to end up suffering or going through a similar attack, then it tells us that the handlers of the President’s social media accounts would have to go through some level of training, some level of protocols to be used and all of that,” he advised.
Dr. Danso-Ansong added that “people who are highly influential are looking at tons of messages that usually come daily and to be able to respond to them timeously and so on and so forth would require a whole team. So there is a team that is responsible for handling the President’s social media accounts, which we believe that is the case. So for such a situation to happen, I believe that those individuals have to go through the training, the protocols and so on and so forth.”
The takeover of the account was confirmed by the Cyber Security Authority (CSA) who said President Mahama’s official X account, @JDMahama was “compromised”.
The CSA in a statement Tuesday, March 18, 2025, said it received report about the ‘hacking’ of the President’s X account in the early hours of Monday, March 17, 2025.
The statement added that the account was used to promote a cryptocurrency called “Solana Africa”.
The CSA said the issue was being addressed as it worked closely with X and other relevant stakeholders to address the incident and to prevent future occurrences.
Later in the day, the President announced that the account has been successfully restored.
He wrote, “Thank you for your inquiries and offers to assist. My team, working with X support, has successfully restored my account.”
