TN govt orders probe into claim of data breach of 50 lakh people in PDS portal hack
By Asianet Newsable English | First Published Jun 30, 2021, 10:45 PM ISTTechnisanct founder and CEO Nandakishore Harikumar told Asianet Newsable that a Secretary-level investigation had started based on the report on the data breach submitted by his company.
The Tamil Nadu government has initiated a probe into the claim made by cybersecurity firm Technosanct about a data breach of over 50 lakh citizens from the state's Public Distribution System.
The Bengaluru-based cyber-security firm reported that a data dump comprising sensitive information, including the Aadhaar card numbers of 4.9 million citizens from Tamil Nadu, was uploaded on a popular hacker forum on June 28 by a vendor known to have shared leaked databases in the past.
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Technisanct founder and CEO Nandakishore Harikumar told Asianet Newsable that a Secretary-level investigation had started based on the report.
The data leaked included Tamil Nadu PDS or ration beneficiaries' addresses, mobile numbers, and other details.
Screenshot of the data dump on a hacker forum
In its report to the central Computer Emergency Response Team and the state government, the firm noted that the identified breach might only be one portion of the information published by the vendor.
The Bengaluru-based firm identified that the Tamil Nadu PDS website tnpds.gov.in was a victim of a cyber attack and was hacked by a cybercriminal group from Vietnam named 1945VN. Over 68 million beneficiaries, including 67 million people registered with Aadhaar, are linked to this portal.
Harikumar told Asianet Newsable said the data was uploaded for sale for eight credits on the website and that the link was taken down barely an hour later.
He also said that his firm had reached out to Tamil Nadu Cyber Police Additional Director General of Police Ganesh Venkataraman, who informed that the report had been forwarded for investigation.
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