Aadhaar Passport Name Address Data of More Than 80 Crore Indians Put on Dark Web For 80000 Dollars Minister Respond

An American cyber security company has recently claimed that Aadhaar and passport data of more than 80 crore Indians is being sold on the Dark Web. The data also includes many other personal information, such as people’s name, father’s name, phone number, age, address, district and pin code etc. The hacker gave information about this breach on the Breach Forum on 9 October.

Resecurity Key Report It has been claimed that a hacker using the nickname ‘pwn0001’ reported putting a data set on the dark web on October 9. This set includes sensitive information like names, father’s names, phone numbers, age, gender, addresses, districts and pin codes of 815 million (81.5 crore) Indians as well as passport numbers and Aadhaar numbers. The cyber security firm says that all this data was put up for sale on the dark web. This breach was detected by the firm’s Hunter (HUMINT) team. This team has also seen this data set being sold on the dark web.

The report says that this team also contacted the hacker and found out that they were willing to sell the complete set of Aadhaar and Indian passport data for $80,000. The firm says that when personal information like Aadhaar data of Indian citizens reaches the dark web, it poses a serious risk of digital identity theft.

The Indian government had not confirmed this data breach until the report made headlines. However, in a recent interview to NDTV, the government has confirmed the breach. Statement Rajeev Chandrasekhar, junior IT minister in the state, said the government’s Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT, was investigating the reports.

The minister also did not comment on the size of the alleged leak, but said the government was working to ensure personal data — whether collected by the Centre or states for administrative purposes, or by businesses for commercial reasons — was kept in a “bullet-proof ecosystem”.