On Saturday, 12 June, Dr RS Sharma, the head of the National Health Authority, said that the claim regarding CoWin’s alleged data leak on the dark web was “baseless”. The statement was issued two days after a tweet by website Dark Leak Market on 10 June, which shared a post about selling information of 150 million citizens, which allegedly includes their names, mobile numbers, Aadhaar Card numbers, and location.
Through Aarogya Setu’s official Twitter account, the Centre had said that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology was looking into the matter, clarifying that “Data speculated to have been leaked, such as geo-location of beneficiaries, is not even collected on Co-WIN.”
“Health Ministry & Chairman, Empowered Group on Vaccine Administration confirm that claim of so-called hackers on dark web relating to alleged data leak is baseless. We continue to take appropriate steps as are necessary, from time to time, to ensure that data of people is safe with Co-WIN.” Sharma told news agency ANI.
Rajshekhar Rajaharia, an independent security researcher, also supported the Centre. “Some fake Dark Leak Market is claiming to sell data of 150 Million COVID-19 Vaccinated People of India. It's completely fake and a Bitcoin scam,” he told Moneycontrol. He added that the website has been posting fake leaked documents, from data leaks related to SBI YONO, which was never hacked and Mobikwik, whose data was not available on the dark web.
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