CoWIN data breach: Was data of lakhs of users leaked? Centre breaks silence (File picture)
After studies of an alleged CoWIN data breach broke out, the Central authorities stepped ahead to situation an official assertion relating to the identical, saying that the data of lakhs of Indians who’ve their particulars registered on the web site is secure.
CoWIN is a authorities platform designed by Centre in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic vaccination drive the place folks needed to register their Aadhaar card and cell quantity for reserving vaccination slots. Last evening, media studies stated that the data of CoWIN has been leaked.
It was reported yesterday that the non-public particulars and personal data of lakhs of Indians have been leaked from CoWIN and can be found on the social networking web site Telegram. However, the Centre confirmed that there isn’t a such leak, and the data is totally secure.
An announcement issued by the Union Health Ministry stated, “Co-WIN portal of Health Ministry is completely safe with safeguards for data privacy… Only OTP authentication-based Access of Data is provided.”
With ref to some Alleged Cowin data breaches reported on social media, @IndianCERT has immdtly responded n reviewed this
data being accessed by bot from a risk actor database, which appears to…
— Rajeev Chandrasekha (@Rajeev_GoI) June 12, 2023
The official assertion of Centre additional reads, “Certain posts on the social media platform Twitter have claimed using a Telegram (online messenger application) BOT, the personal data of individuals who have been vaccinated is being accessed. It is reported that the BOT has been able to pull individual data by simply passing the mobile number or Aadhaar number of a beneficiary.”
Centre additional assured all of the users that the non-public data on CoWIN is underneath the safety of a Web Application Firewall, Anti-DDoS, SSL/TLS, common vulnerability evaluation, Identity & Access Management and different safety methods.
Further, Union Minister of Electronics and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar additionally confirmed that there isn’t a data breach within the CoWIN platform, and confirmed {that a} Telegram bot was simply randomly throwing up data when a cellphone quantity was typed in.
However, Opposition events claimed that a number of leaders together with TMC MP Derek O’Brien, Congress’s senior leaders P Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh and KC Venugopal and different politicians have misplaced their data on the CoWIN app.
