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Millions of Aadhaar numbers leaked by Indias state gas company

Tuesday 19 February 2019 10:01 CET | News

Indane, India’s state-owned gas company, has left unprotected a part of its website for dealers and distributors, leaving millions of Aadhaar numbers exposed.

The part of the site was indexed in Google, allowing anyone to bypass the login page altogether and gain access to the dealer database. Indane is said to have more than 90 million customers across India.

The data was found by a security researcher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the Indian authorities, according to TechCrunch. However, another researcher, who goes by the online handle Elliot Alderson and has prior experience investigating Aadhaar exposures, investigated the exposure and provided the results to the online publication.

He found exposed over 11, 000 valid dealer IDs, including names and addresses of customers, as well as the customers’ confidential Aadhaar number hidden in the link of each record. The researcher, who explained more about his findings in a blog post, estimates the total number affected could surpass 6.7 million customers.

In 2018, the gas and energy company was found leaking data from an endpoint with a direct connection to Aadhaar’s database. This time, however, the leak is believed to be limited to its own data.

TechCrunch contacted both Indane and UIDAI, but did not hear back.


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Keywords: Indane, Aadhaar, biometrics, security breach, India, fraud prevention, online security, digital identity, online security
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