Bad news! Aadhar, Passport details of many shrouded on dark web

Since the time the coronavirus lockdown began, an unprecedented spike in the quantity of cyberattacks have enormously increased. Of late government was busy in demystifying the evil acts by cyber hackers against Arogya Setu App.

Recently another such news came to light, where personal information of more than 1 lakh Indians have been leaked and shrouded on the dark web. Scanned documents of hundreds and thousands of Indians have surfaced up on the dark web, analysts at cyber intelligence firm Cyble uncovered on Wednesday.

The details dumped online incorporate scanned duplicates of Indian passports IDs, PAN cards and Aadhaar cards. All the archives have been put discounted on the dark web by a illegal hacker.

“We came across a non-reputed actor who is currently selling over 1 lakh Indian National IDs on the dark net. With such a low reputation, ideally, we would have skipped this; however, the samples shared by the actor intrigued our interest and also the volume. The actor is alleged to have access to over 1 lakh IDs from different places in India,” Cyble said.

One who manages to procure these documents illegally can possibly exploit it for nefarious reasons, such as identity thefts, scams and corporate espionage. Gaining such access would serve as a proof for impostors to cause fraudulent activities on phone or the internet.

The Cyble researchers managed to trace around 1,000 IDs from the seller and confirmed that the scanned IDs belong to Indian nationals. After a careful analysis, the experts say that it is obtained from third party, and there’s minimal proof that the furnished information is from government.

Also the cyber researchers claimed that such crime would have triggered due to a data base leakage from a company segment that borrows individual details for KYC norms and it’s compliance.