A high-profile cyber incident has disrupted official social media channels of Ireland’s national police force, An Garda Síochána, after unauthorized actors gained access to two prominent accounts on the X platform earlier this week to push cryptocurrency promotions. According to Ireland’s national public service broadcaster RTÉ, the compromised accounts — @GardaTraffic, the force’s main account for road safety and traffic updates, and @GardaInfo, a general public information account — had their official Garda branding stripped from their profiles by Wednesday night. The bad actors replaced the original branding and began publishing a stream of posts advertising an unspecified cryptocurrency. Multiple posts were automatically flagged by X’s content moderation systems, which added warnings linking the content to an already suspended third-party profile. The hackers also altered the profile location setting to list Amsterdam, masking the actual origin of the activity. In an official statement released shortly after the breach was discovered, An Garda Síochána confirmed that the unauthorized access was limited exclusively to its two public-facing X accounts. The force emphasized that no internal police data systems were compromised in the incident, and there has been no loss of sensitive police information or disruption to core operational work. A police spokesperson issued a public advisory urging social media users to avoid interacting with any content posted to the two compromised accounts, or any imposter accounts claiming to represent the official Garda channels. “An Garda Síochána continues to carry out our internal enquiries and work with the X platform to understand how this unauthorised access has occurred,” the spokesperson added in the initial statement. By Thursday, the force issued an updated announcement confirming that the two compromised accounts had been successfully recovered and restored to police control. However, officials confirmed the accounts will remain inactive over the coming days to allow the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau to conduct a full forensic investigation into the incident, identify the attackers, and shore up any security vulnerabilities that allowed the breach. The incident highlights the growing risk of unauthorized access to public institution social media accounts, which bad actors often target to spread misinformation or promote fraudulent schemes to large follower bases.