The government launched an investigation into a data breach after personal data of vaccinated citizens, including VVIPs, from the CoWin website was allegedly leaked via a Telegram messenger channel.
The government said the CoWin website, a repository of all data of those who have been vaccinated against covid-19, maintains strong data privacy safeguards. The health ministry stated that social-media reports claiming individuals’ data can be accessed from a Telegram bot bypassing the mobile number or Aadhaar number “are without any basis and mischievous in nature".
The health ministry said the CoWin website was completely safe, with adequate safeguards for data privacy. The ministry of electronics and information technology requested the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the agency that coordinates the efforts on cyber security matters, to look into this issue and submit a report, in addition to internally reviewing the existing security measures of CoWin.
Minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in a tweet that the data being accessed by the bot seems to have been populated with previously stolen data from databases other than CoWin. He added that the government was reviewing the existing security systems of the CoWin portal. “It does not appear that the CoWin app or database has been directly breached," he said. Chandrasekhar said CERT-In, under his ministry that looks into instances of data breaches, immediately responded to the allegations of a data breach.
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