India's biggest data breach? Covid information of over 800 million people leaked
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The report said that when investigators tried to contact the threat actor, they learned that they were willing to 'sell the entire Aadhaar and Indian passport dataset for $80,000"'
Data of more than 800 million Indians, including Aadhaar and passport details, has been put up for sale on the dark web after an alleged leak.
Resecurity, a US-based cybersecurity solutions and services provider was the first to report the massive breach.
It said in a blog post that its HUNTER (HUMINT) unit identified millions of personally identifiable information (PII) records belonging to Indian residents being "offered for sale on the Dark Web" in early October.
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A threat actor, who goes by the alias 'pwn0001' posted a thread on Oct 9, on Breach Forums providing access to 815 million "Indian Citizen Aadhaar & Passport" records.
Also read: Heart attack deaths linked to severe COVID-19 cases? India's health minister issues warning
The report said that when investigators tried to contact the threat actor, they learned that they were willing to "sell the entire Aadhaar and Indian passport dataset for $80,000".
All the leaked information can reportedly be traced to the personal data of people collected by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, there's no official confirmation yet on the source.
Image source Resecurity.
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The threat actor, pwn0001, shared spreadsheets containing four large leak samples with fragments of Aadhaar data as proof.
One of the leaked samples contains 100,000 records of PII related to Indian residents. The information was also shared and circulated on social media forum X.
As per local media reports, Health Ministry officials said that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert – In) has also been alerted by the ICMR.
"Verification process of the breach reports are ongoing," a Health Ministry official said as quoted.
(With inputs from agencies)
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