With over 1.3 billion people and the government has made it easier for people to get tested by setting up testing camps and by allowing private labs to conduct tests. As a result, the number of COVID-19 tests conducted in India has increased significantly over the past two years. A survey says, India is among the top five countries targeted for cyberattacks.

Aadhar ,which has issued over 1.4 billion digital IDs since its inception in 2009,is one of the world’s largest biometric ID Programs. A shocking news came on the India's biggest data leak so far. A massive leak of Aadhar data on the dark Web. It shows there is significant vulnerability in India’s cybersecurity infrastructure.

There were advisory, Travellers have to undergo RT-PCR test before departure and upload the report on Air Suvidha portal from 1 January 2023. This is in addition to the 2% random testing of all international passengers on their arrival to the airport.

Aadhar card number become a common name with every institutions, shopping, banking and certain commercial complexes are asking the Aadhar card for the verification and authentication of the person visiting the premises.  Secondly, it becomes significant facilitator of electronic payments, online Know Your Customer(e-KYC) verifications. The Election Commission Of India has been proactive in linking its voter registration database with the Aadhar system.

There is need of urgency to protect the PII ( Personal Identity Information) at the source, so that it’ll be secured at the source as well as in the transit. A question comes when the technology is available why the department is not using the technology to secure the PII data.

The leakage of PII, including Aadhar details, poses a severe risk of digital identity theft. With stolen identity information, cybercriminals can commit online banking theft, tax refund frauds and other financial crimes.

It is suspected to be the biggest data leak case in the country so far, details of 81.5 crore Indians with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) are on sale. The recent cybercrime uncovers, a fresh debate on the security and reliability of Aadhar’s centralized system. India’s premier agency Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is likely to probe the matter once ICMR files a complaint.

A ‘threat actor’ with a handle on X, has advertised the database in the breached forum on dark web which involves records of 81.5 million Indian citizens — Aadhaar and passport information along with names, phone numbers and addresses. The ‘threat actor’ claimed the data — extracted from the Covid-19 test details of citizens — was sourced from ICMR.

As per the source, ICMR has been facing multiple cyber-attack attempts since February and central agencies as well as the council were aware of it. Over 6,000 attempts were made last year to hack ICMR servers. The agencies had also asked ICMR to take remedial action to avert any data leak.

In this regard,CERT-In has informed ICMR about the breach and the verification of sample data, which is on sale, matches with the actual data of ICMR after which all agencies were ropes in.