Aadhaar details of 815 million citizens leaked in India’s biggest data breach

This news article published by Hindustan Times, reports on a recent data breach linked to the Aadhaar (a unified national ID) database. The report noted that the leak was initially noticed by Resecurity, an American cyber security and intelligence agency. According to the cyber firm, a ‘threat actor’ with the alias ‘pwn001’ posted a thread on Breach Forums,– which describes itself as a ‘premier Databreach discussion and leaks forum’ – enabling access to records of 815 million (81.5 crore) Indians.

The hacker has advertised Aadhaar and passport information along with names, phone number, and addresses; these, the hacker claims, were extracted from the Covid-19 test details of citizens registered with ICMR.

This incident highlights the issues with a centralized health database.

To read the full article, please click on this link.

Image credit: Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash