CoWIN data leak: Man, minor held for leaking data from CoWIN on Telegram
CoWIN data leak: A Bihar man has been arrested and a juvenile apprehended for their alleged involvement in leaking data from CoWIN portal on Telegram.
A special cell of the Delhi Police arrested the man and apprehended his minor brother. As per preliminary information, the man allegedly took the help of his mother, a health worker, to gather data from the CoWIN portal. He then used Telegram app to leak the data.
Recently, there were reports of leak of data of beneficiaries' from the CoWIN platform on Telegram. The data had been accessed by a Telegram bot that revealed data such as gender, DOB, Aadhar card, address, centre for vaccination etc. Following this, Opposition parties asked the government to take deterrent action.
On the other hand, the Central Government termed the reports as "baseless" and asserted that "CoWIN portal is completely safe with adequate safeguards for data privacy".
The matter was then sent for a review by the country's nodal cyber security agency CERT-In.
On the other hand, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar had also claimed that "there was no direct breach of the CoWIN app or database". He maintained that the details shared by the bot could be from data that was previously leaked.
- With inputs from agencies
