IT Security and Aadhaar Data Leak

Aadhaar Data Leak
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Summary of the Incident
The Aadhaar data leak involved the national database for identity cards in India. It is estimated that the data leak affected more than 1 billion Indian citizens leaving their data vulnerable and accessible to hackers. In India, the national identity number is tied to almost all essential services that the citizens receive. These include education, healthcare, and banking services. Therefore, accessing the national identity number may mean easy access to a lot of information concerning a citizen. The information that was possible to collect in the data leak included the national identity numbers (also known as Aadhaar numbers), names of the number holder, phone numbers, street addresses, and banking details (Whittaker, 2019). As noted above, these data points are usually tied together.
The goal of developing Aadhaar was to enable citizens to access most services from a centralized point (Whittaker, 2019). Therefore, a centralized database is used to store most of the information about a citizen. Due to this centralization, a vulnerability in the system would mean that a hacker could potentially gain numerous details about citizens. This particular data leak was reported to have various negative implications. It was reported that a great deal of data was harvested and used to potentially propagate illegal deals on the dark web. The following is a description of how this phenomenon unfolded.
After harvesting personal information data from the Aadhaar national database, some hackers could sell data concerning an individual for a few hundred dollars over the dark web. The dark web is a large and well-organized part of the web that is used to propagate illegal activities such as peddling drugs and committing financial fraud. One of the goals of the participants in the market is to remain anonymous. This phenomenon explains why cryptocurrency is the major form of currency on the dark web. With access to key details concerning a person, such as their national Aadhaar number, address, name, and banking details, it is very easy to impersonate a person. It was feared that such cases potentially happened.
Although the Indian government denied that there was a data leak, there were so many pointers toward the opposite (Whittaker, 2019). To further indicate that there was a vulnerability, the persons responsible for maintaining the database finally created a patch for the affected area. The event raises numerous concerns over the safety of personal information stored on the Aadhaar system. Undoubtedly, leakage of information from such a database could have debilitating consequences.
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