Minor From Bihar Held In CoWIN Data Breach Probe

The Delhi Police have arrested a juvenile from Bihar for allegedly leaking data from CoWIN, the country's Covid-19 vaccination tracking platform.

The man was arrested by the Delhi Police Special Cell's IFFSO (Intelligence Fusion & Strategic Operations) unit.

Reportedly, the man leaked sensitive personal details of politicians, journalists bureaucrats, and other prominent leaders on the social media platform Telegram.

The man took the help of his mother, a health worker to gather data from the CoWIN portal.

Last week, reports surfaced on a purported breach of data of beneficiaries registered on the CoWIN platform.

The leaked data allegedly includes mobile numbers, Aadhaar numbers, Passports, Voter IDs, and details of family members. They were freely available online.

Opposition parties, including Congress and TMC, demanded an inquiry into the data breach claims and asked the government to take deterrent action.

However, the government said that the Co-WIN portal of the Health Ministry is completely safe with safeguards for data privacy and the reports of data breaches are without any basis and mischievous in nature.

"It is clarified that all such reports are without any basis and mischievous in nature. The co-WIN portal of the Health Ministry is completely safe with adequate safeguards for data privacy. Furthermore, security measures are in place on the Co-WIN portal, with Web Application Firewall, Anti-DDoS, SSL/TLS, regular vulnerability assessment, Identity, and Access Management, etc," said the health ministry.