The leaked information includes names, phone numbers, addresses, Aadhaar, and passport details of Aadhaar registered users, which are available for sale online.
United States-based cybersecurity firm Resecurity has in a report claimed that personal data of around 81.5 crore Indians has been leaked on the dark web.
1. Resecurity’s report revealed that personal data of approximately 81.5 crore Indians has been exposed on the dark web.
2. The leaked information includes names, phone numbers, addresses, Aadhaar, and passport details of Aadhaar registered users, which are available for sale online.
3. A threat actor known as ‘pwn0001’ offered access to Aadhaar and passport records of 81.5 crore Indian citizens on Breach Forums on October 9.
4. Resecurity’s investigators found that this threat actor was willing to sell the entire Aadhaar and Indian passport database on hand for $80,000.
5. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is currently probing the breach.
6. There are suspicions that the compromised data may originate from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) database, as per reports.
7. Another hacker in June 2023 disclosed the leak of personal data, including names, phone numbers, passport numbers, and Aadhaar numbers of over 80 crore Indians, which includes COVID-19-related information.
Investigation was launched in June for the CoWIN vaccine data breach due to the alleged leakage, including VVIPs data via a Telegram messenger channel from the CoWin website.
Earlier in April, hacking group ‘Hacktivist Indonesia’ has circulated a list of 12,000 websites which they want to target. They announced plans to attack thousands Indian government websites in the near future. According to an alert shared by the Home Ministry, this group has previously been linked to cyber attacks in Sweden, Israel and the US.