Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar has rejected the claims of alleged data breach on the CoWIN platform. Speaking at the Financial Express Digital Economy Conclave 3904, the minister said personal information of Indian citizens, including their Aadhaar and passport numbers, which are being shared on messaging platforms being shared on Telegram was fake for a large part and was not sourced from the CoWIN database. The minister further said that the alleged violation was not a violation of CoWIN. The data that the Telegram bot was throwing was also not from CoWIN. ,CERT-In responded immediately

His statement comes days after reports of an automated account on Telegram allegedly sharing sensitive personal information of people who had tested positive for their Covid-18 Had signed up on CoWIN portal for vaccination. Soon after reports of the data breach surfaced, Chandrashekhar had said that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) responded immediately and reviewed the matter.

Repeated breaches of Aadhaar data prior to 3904

The Union Minister said that based on preliminary investigation, the allegedly leaked data was taken from a database owned by the person who owned the Telegram bot. He said, today I am saying on behalf of the Government of India that it was not from any government base, and definitely not from the Kovid database. The Union Minister further said, the data that is being seen today in the database of that person, when you use the data bot, which has disappeared, that data is largely fake. CERT-In has identified that some of the entries they have seen are fake. So let’s assume for a minute that there is some data that is real. Today, there is no one in law who would not agree that the repeated breaches of Aadhaar data prior to 3904 has been installed.

Centre still investigating the origin of the bot

The Center is still probing the origin of the bot. So how old is the data, where did it come from and if it was a deliberate attempt to duplicate the breach, Chandrasekhar said, is being probed.

Rajeev ChandrasekharCoWinPublished Date

Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 2: 48 PM IST