Aadhaar data leak: Massive data breach exposes about 81 crore Indians’ personal information on dark web. Details here

A report by US-based cybersecurity firm Resecurity has claimed that personal identifiable information of about 815 million which is 81.5 crore Indians has been leaked on the dark web, as reported by Business Standard.

As per the report, data including names, phone numbers, addresses, Aadhaar, passport information are for sale online.

Resecurity in a blogpost wrote, “On 9 October, a threat actor going by the name ‘pwn0001’ posted a thread on Breach Forums brokering access to 815 million “Indian Citizen Aadhaar & Passport” records.” Notably, India’s entire population is over 1.486 billion people."

The company also added that its HUNTER (HUMINT) unit investigators who established contact with the threat actor, learned that they were willing to sell entire Aadhaar and Indian passport database for $80,000.

As per media reports, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is currently investigating the breach that was discovered by hacker “pwn0001.”

Another report by News18 state that the compromised data might be from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) database.

A hacker on X has also informed, “India Biggest Data Breach Unknown hackers have leaked the personal data of over 800 million Indians Of COVID 19. The leaked data includes: Name, Father's name, Phone number, Other number, Passport number, Aadhaar number,  Age” 

Also Read: Aadhaar: A step-by-step guide to lock biometrics data to protect your money from being stolen

Meanwhile, this is not the first time data was breached. Earlier in June, the government had launched an investigation into a data breach after personal data of vaccinated citizens, including VVIPs, from the CoWin website was allegedly leaked via a Telegram messenger channel.

Also Read: India reaffirms confidence in Aadhaar technology, calls Moody's opinions baseless

The data breach claim has come as a major jolt to the government, which has been taking steps to digitize the economy and has built digital public infrastructure (DPI) based on the biometric identification number Aadhaar, individuals’ mobile numbers, and bank accounts as the backbone for the transfer of benefits and innovation in the private sector.