India’s Health Ministry Refutes Claims of Major Covid Data Breach

The Indian health ministry has denied reports of a data breach involving personal information of millions from its Covid vaccination database. However, the health ministry has ordered an investigation into the matter, indicating some disagreement within the Indian government over the alleged breach. The database in question, known as the CoWin app, stores personal information of millions of Indians. The alleged breach was reported by a local Indian media outlet, The Fourth, which demonstrated how a Telegram bot could reveal personal information from the database, including names, birth dates, vaccination details, and phone numbers. The database is supposed to contain only this information. As such, concerns from cybersecurity experts have been raised following the incident, with no security alert having been issued by India’s Computer Emergency Response Team. In June 2021, there were also claims of a similar breach, resulting in the sale of data relating to 150 million Indians, which the Indian government denied.