NEW DELHI: A man from Bihar has been arrested in connection with the data breach of the CoWIN portal, along with his teenage brother, officials said on Thursday. The man was accused of using the Telegram app to leak information, they said.The accused was captured at his residence, a police officer said […]
Published Date – Fri 06/23/23 08:00 AM
New Delhi: A man from Bihar state has been arrested for allegedly leaking data from the CoWIN portal, along with his teenage brother, officials said on Thursday.
The man was accused of using the Telegram app to leak information, they said.
With the help of technical surveillance, the accused was caught at his residence in Patna, a police officer said. His mother, a paramedic, was also questioned.
He said the accused managed to steal the data of some people in Bihar after logging into his mother’s account on the CoWin portal.
Initial investigations revealed that the defendants hacked into the system, created a bot and shared it on social media. Police said they also found he had not sold the data to anyone.
The official noted that the accused did not have any ulterior motives for doing so. It is suspected that he accepted help from his mother, which is why she was also questioned.
The opposition party has called on the government to take deterrent action following claims that the data of citizens registered on the CoWIN platform was compromised.
However, the government called such reports “hoaxes” and “without any basis”, while insisting that the CoWIN portal is fully secure and has adequate data privacy safeguards.
The matter was sent for review by CERT-In, the country’s node cybersecurity agency, which said in its initial report that the Telegram bot’s backend database, the so-called leak center, did not directly access the API CoWIN database.
In a statement, the federal health ministry said it had launched an internal exercise to review existing safety measures.
The CoWIN portal is a data repository of all people in the country who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
