Personal and financial details of 70 lakh Indians leaked on dark web

10-12-2020

Debit and credit card details, names, contact numbers, annual income, employer firms and email addresses of as many as 70 lakh Indians have reportedly been leaked on the dark web alongside PAN numbers of over 5 lakh cardholders. This leaked information is 2GB in size and dates between 2010 and 2019. It includes types of user accounts and whether they have enabled mobile alerts or not. Although the leak does not consist of credit and debit card numbers, hackers can use personal contact details for phishing and other serious online attacks. Internet security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia told IANS that someone could have sold this confidential data of users on the dark web, which later became public. There are also chances that this data might have come from third-party service providers who are contracted by banks for selling of credit/debit cards. While it has not been verified whether the data of 70 lakh users are genuine or not, Rajshekhar cross-checked the data of some users and found many fields to be accurate. �I think someone sold this data/link on the dark web and later it became public. Financial data is the most expensive data on the Internet." He notes, �Data pertains to the period between 2010 and 2019, which could be very valuable to scammers and hackers. Since this is financial data, it is very valuable for hackers and scammers as they can use the personal contact details for phishing or other attacks." This is not the first time that confidential details of people have been leaked on the dark web. Just recently, personal information of around 2 crore BigBasket users was put for sale on this dark side of the internet.