CoWIN app or its database not breached directly, clarifies Centre

New Delhi: The Centre on Monday said that it does not appear that the CoWIN app or its database has been directly breached as alleged in some reports after a Covid data leak surfaced on social media app Telegram.

Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that with reference to some alleged CoWIN data breaches reported on social media, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) immediately responded to the threat and reviewed it.

"A Telegram bot was throwing up CoWIN app details upon entry of phone numbers. The data being accessed by bot from a threat actor database, which seems to have been populated with previously breached/stolen data stolen from the past," the minister said in a tweet.

He said that it does not appear that the CoWIN app or database has been directly breached.

"The National Data Governance policy has been finalised that will create a common framework of data storage, access and security standards across all of the government," said Chandrasekhar.

Earlier, Trinamool Congress leader Saket Gokhale alleged that the data of several citizens, including politicians and journalists who took Covid vaccine, has been leaked and queried why the Centre was not aware of the incident.

In a series of tweets, Gokhale, who is spokesperson of Trinamool Congress, said: "SHOCKING: There has been a major data breach of Modi government where personal details of all vaccinated Indians including their mobile numbers, Aadhaar numbers, Passport numbers, Voter ID, Details of family members etc. have been leaked and are freely available."

He also said that data of several senior journalists have also been breached.

"The personal details of literally every Indian who got a Covid-19 vaccination are freely available on this leaked database," he claimed.

His remarks come in the wake of the alleged data breach of several citizens after taking Covid vaccines.