Ishita Nigam
1 Nov 2023
Aadhaar and passport number, name, age and even address of 4 lakh Indians has been hacked and uploaded on the dark web.
In what is being termed as probably India's largest data breach ever, personal records of around 81 crore Indians have been hacked room the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) servers. The breach was unearthed by American cyber security firm, Resecurity, on October 10th.
The hacker named 'pwn0001' is auctioning up to 90 GB of data he extracted from the ICMR servers. Last year, AIIMS New Delhi had lost 4 crore records, i.e. 1.3 TB data in November 2022. Data was later retrieved in December. Hackers had demanded ₹200 crore from the hospital authorities in ransom. Experts believe this latest ransomware attack could demand above ₹1,000 crores.
This breach can lead to identity theft for lakhs of Indians and culminate in other costs. The government could already be in negotiations with the hackers.