As India is moving into a digital age, it harbors sensitive information of its citizens in a decentralized manner at various government departments. The biggest threat to this digital movement comes from cybercriminals who always look for holes in the security of these government systems. Recently, it was revealed that sensitive information containing aadhar and passport details of more than 80 crore Indians were leaked and made for sale on the dark web.
This leak is believed to be the biggest data breach ever to take place in India. There has been some fresh update in this case as the seller of the database containing alleged sensitive information shared samples from it. The hacker pwn0001 shared a sample dataset of 100,000 Indians. However it is revealed that only 10 percent of this data contains aadhar details. The hacker also said that it has passport details of only a few thousand people.
The hacker on the dark web has been trying to sell all this data at $80,000. It has also been revealed that this data was purchased on the dark web from a different source earlier at a cheaper price and the hacker is trying to make a profit out of selling it. This could suggest that the attack was not a fresh one at any department and hint to numerous previous data breaches.
The Government of India has Digital Personal Data Protection Law which allows the state to fine a platform as high as ₹250 crore in case of data leak. But the decentralization of data makes it difficult to find the source of any data breach.
