CoWin Portal Safe, Says Centre, Calls Data Leak Reports "Mischievous"
A report has claimed that sensitive personal information of several politicians, bureaucrats, and individuals - who had signed up on CoWIN - was shared by a bot account on Telegram.
The Centre has assured that data in the CoWin portal -- the country's Covid-19 vaccination tracking platform -- is completely safe, following reports that personal information of people registered on the portal has been breached. The reports, the Centre said, are "mischievous".
"Co-WIN portal of Health Ministry is completely safe with safeguards for data privacy... Only OTP authentication-based Access of Data is provided," read a statement from the Union Health Ministry.
Sensitive personal details of politicians, bureaucrats, and others have been leaked on the social media platform Telegram, reported data-driven news portal South Asia Index in a series of tweets this morning.
The leaked data allegedly includes Aadhaar, voter ID, passport numbers and cellphone numbers of those who received Covid-19 vaccines, tweeted South East Asia Index. "Details of family members of all COVID-19 vaccinated Indians have also been leaked in this major breach," read another tweet...
In its statement, the Centre listed the security measures – "Web Application Firewall, Anti-DDoS, SSL/TLS, regular vulnerability assessment, Identity & Access Management," among other things.
The statement also said the Union Health Ministry has requested CERT-In -- the government's computer emergency response team -- to look into this issue and submit a report. Shortly after, Union minister for Electronics and Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, tweeted:The Opposition Trinamool Congress has alleged that the leaked data includes the details of Rajya Sabha MP and senior party colleague Derek O'Brien, Congress's senior leaders P Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh and KC Venugopal, Deputy Chairman Rajya Sabha Haribansh Narayan Singh, Rajya Sabha MPs Sushmita Dev, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, and Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut.
He has even added what appeared to be screenshots with his tweets.
The Telegram account, which shared the personal details, has been inactive since this morning. The bot has apparently showed the name of the person, the government ID they used while getting the vaccination and where they got their vaccination. It also has records of date of birth and passport numbers of those who updated CoWIN for foreign travel.
CoWIN is integrated with Aarogya Setu and UMANG Apps. UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) provides a single platform for access to pan India e-Gov services ranging from Central to local government bodies.
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