Personal information belonging to more than 81.5 crore Indian residents is being sold on the dark web by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in what may be the worst data breach in the country’s history. Important facts including names, phone numbers, residences, and Aadhaar and passport details are among the data, reports state.
Resecurity, an intelligence and cybersecurity company based in the US, found the vulnerability. It was claimed on October 9 that 815 million ‘Indian Citizen Aadhaar and Passport’ records were made available for access in a thread on Breach Forums by a threat actor going by the handle “pwn0001.”
Although the source of the leak is still unknown, the hacker claims that millions of Indians’ names, phone numbers, Aadhaar and passport details, as well as their temporary and permanent addresses, were taken. According to the hacker, ICMR gathered this information while testing Covid-19.
It is challenging to pinpoint the exact location of the breach because the COVID-19 test data is dispersed around numerous government agencies, including the Ministry of Health, the ICMR, and the National Informatics Centre (NIC).
Cybersecurity experts have also found 100,000 records of personally identifiable information (PII) connected to Indian citizens in a leaked sample. This sample contained valid Aadhar Card IDs, which were validated using a government portal with a “Verify Aadhaar” option.
After reaching out to the threat actor, the researchers discovered that they were prepared to part with the complete dataset of Indian passports and Aadhaar for a price of $80,000, which is more than Rs 66 lakh. The threat actors did not, however, reveal how they got the information.
