Baseless, mischievous, says health ministry on reports of CoWIN data breach

The ministry has also requested the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to look into the issue and submit a report.

Hyderabad: The Union health ministry on Monday said that the CoWIN portal is completely safe and refuted reports of a data breach that had leaked personal information of many Indian citizens on the personal messaging platform telegram.

Earlier, data including the Aadhar card and PAN card details of many public figures had leaked, divulging details like names, date of birth, phone numbers, and other details provided during registration on the CoWIN portal.

According to a press release from the ministry, reports of the data breach are “baseless and mischievous.”

The ministry also added that it has requested the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to look into the issue and submit a report.

In a report by The Fourth News, that first revealed the breach, the portal had revealed that data of Ram Sewak Sharma, chairman of CoWIN high power panel, Kerala health minister Veena George, Congress general secretary KC Venugopal and Union minister of State Meenakshi Lekhi were available on the messaging platform.

Furthermore, The News Minute went on to report that the breach had also affected Telangana’s IT minister Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao (KTR), DMK’s Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, BJP Tamil Nadu President K Annamalai, Congress Member of Lok Sabha Karti Chidambaram and BJP’s former Union minister of health, Harsh Vardhan.

According to TNM, these politicians had used their passport details to avail of vaccine slot appointments.

In the beginning, the Telegram bot divulged the complete Aadhar number of individuals. Later, it only showed the last four digits.

CERT-In’s lackadaisical attitude towards breaches

The nodal body for cybersecurity under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team has not been active in investigating such data breaches, according to Hyderabad-based data activist Srinivas Kodali.

“People ask for forensic investigation to assess the scale of such data breaches and to see who has done it. But CERT-In never does its job,” Kodali told Siasat.com. Kodali compared the government’s data storage to a Golden House. “If you store gold in such amount, people will definitely attempt to steal it,” he added.

Earlier in the day, Trinamool Congress spokesperson Saket Gokhale had shared screenshots of the alleged data breach on Twitter.

Gokhale also went on to ridicule Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who holds the charge of electronics, communications, & IT portfolios alongside the railway ministry.

“How long will the incompetence of Ashwini Vaishnaw be ignored by PM Modi?” he asked in the tweet.

Earlier in 2021, there had been reports of vaccination data of 150 million Indians being leaked from the CoWIN portal. Such repeated instances have raised questions regarding the safety of user data on the portal.

Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, one of those whose data has been allegedly leaked, shared a screenshot on Twitter, stating that the Union government has ignored the privacy of its citizens. He also questioned why the government was delaying a data protection law.

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