A man from Bihar has been arrested, and his minor brother apprehended, for their alleged involvement in a significant data leak from India’s health ministry’s Co-WIN portal, according to reports. The arrest was made by the Delhi police’s special cell, who suspect that the accused collaborated with his mother, a health worker, to gather information from the portal. The data leak involved the availability of data from the Co-WIN portal through a Telegram bot, including details about COVID-19 vaccination status and information from government-issued IDs, which also included data related to high-profile politicians. The Delhi police, along with CERT-In, the Computer Emergency Response Team of India, worked together in the investigation and sought information from Telegram about the bot and its creator. The arrested individual, identified through technical surveillance, was apprehended from his residence in Bihar. It is believed that he successfully hacked the system and shared the data online. However, authorities do not suspect he had any particular intention to sell the data, and they do not believe he had any other ulterior motives beyond the data leak. Following the incident, India’s IT minister, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, claimed that the Co-WIN database was not directly breached and that the Telegram bot was displaying information from previously stolen data. Nonetheless, this explanation has raised further questions regarding the nature and extent of the data breach.
