81.5 crore Indians Data Breach: India has suffered its biggest data leak ever if the claims of a hacker ‘pwn0001’ are to be believed. The personal details of over 81.5 crore Indians have been leaked online, allegedly from the data collected by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) during COVID-19 testing. The data includes names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and even Aadhaar numbers.
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First noticed by Resecurity, an American cyber security and intelligence agency, the stolen data was posted by hacker pwn0001 on Breach Forums – data breach and discussion forum, exposing private data of over 80 crore Indians.
The ICMR is yet to respond to these claims and the case is more likely to be investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) once it receives a complaint from ICMR.
The stolen data includes 100,000 files containing personal information of Indian citizens. To validate the accuracy of this data, a portion of these records was cross-verified using the government’s “Verify Aadhaar” feature, which confirmed the authenticity of the Aadhaar details.
According to News18 report, the Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In) has also issued a warning to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) regarding this breach.
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