Mega personal data breach busted, one held: Personal; info of 66.9 cr people stolen [details]

In one of the alarming cyber thefts, giving insight into how personal details and information of everyone could be at risk, Cyderabad Police has busted into a major data breach. The man who stole personal details of nearly 70 crore people has been arrested. While more details are yet to trickle, it is believed that he stole data of individuals and organisations belonging to 24 states and eight metropolitan cities. The man, speculated to be operating a racket, was stealing and selling all the personal information gathered.

As per the information shared by Cyderabad Police, “The accused has been found to possess data from various sources, including, Byjus, Vedantu, cabusers, GST, RTO, Amazon, Netflix, Paytm, Phonepe etc. The accused was operating through a website called InspireWebz based in Faridabad, Haryana and was selling database to clients.”

The police further informed, “The accused has been holding data from 135 categories containing sensitive information of government, private organisations, and individuals, and the police seized two mobile phones, two laptops, and the data during the arrest.”

The insane cost of data breach

As per the statistics shared by Surf Shark, India ranked second in the world by the number of data breaches in the period of Jan-June 2022. A single data breach in 2022, costs India’s government Rs 17.6 crore.

Should you be worried?

Ideally, yes. Since with most data breaches the extent of the breach is unknown and their repercussions can manifest years after the breach has occurred. The press release from the police said the accused, named Vinay Bharadwaj, was found possessinf data of students of edu-tech organisations. The gand was also allegedly selling key data of defence and Army personnel to cyber criminals. Sensitive data of 2.5 lakh defence personnel containing their ranks, email ids, place of of posting, etc was found available with those acused. Data of 1.1 customers of six banks, 1.2 crore Watsapp users, 17 lakh Facebook users, and 35,000 employees of the Delhi government was accessed by the fraudsters. The accused had also accessed data of 89 lakh people who had applied for credit cards. 

The shock waves continue

While the government bears the cost, it’s the individuals who pay the price of data breach. The news created panic among people who have been regular users of the apps in questions. Some even tweeted having their debit and credit cards saved for ease of payment and access. “Is there anything called safe these days? Some of them are most trusted sites who are supposed to have the best security measures in place,” wrote an angry user. “Is there anything that’s not compromised these days?” wrote another user echoing the sentiment of several shocked netizens. Another one expressed concern about the fact that one person getting caught doesn’t make them safe, since no one knows whose personal details have been passed on to which all organisations and entities.