HT Digital,
New Delhi, Oct 31: A recent report from US cybersecurity firm Resecurity has exposed a massive data breach affecting 81.5 crore Indians.
The breach, one of the largest in the country’s history, was revealed by a threat actor named ‘pwn0001’ on Breach Forums. This actor claims to possess 81.5 crore records, including Aadhaar and passport details, nearly half of India’s total population of over 147.6 crore.
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Resecurity’s HUNTER unit confirmed the threat actor is willing to sell the entire Aadhaar and Indian passport database for $80,000, approximately Rs 66,60,760. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is investigating the breach.
It is speculated that the compromised data may have originated from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) database.
Another report suggests an unidentified hacker has leaked personal data of over 800 million Indians due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This breach is a significant blow to the Indian government’s digital initiatives, which aimed to digitise the economy and develop digital public infrastructure (DPI) centred on biometric identification numbers (Aadhaar), mobile numbers, and bank accounts.
This follows concerns in June about the alleged leak of personal data from vaccinated citizens via a Telegram messenger channel from the CoWin website.
