Aadhaar Data Breach: Hackers Access Bank Account Details of TRAI Chief, Deposit Rs 1 to Expose Vulnerability

New Delhi, July 30: Ethical hackers on Sunday claimed to have accessed bank account details of TRAI chief R S Sharma and deposited Rs 1 in his bank account to highlight the potential of Aadhaar number being misused. This came a day after Sharma shared his Aadhaar number publicly on Twitter, challenging anyone to show how mere knowledge of 12-digit UIDAI can be misused to harm him.

Ethical hackers - including Elliot Alderson, Pushpendra Singh, Kanishk Sajnani, Anivar Arvind, and Karan Saini - claimed to have details of Sharma's account number and IFSC code in five different banks - PNB, Bank of India, SBI (joint account), Kotak Mahindra and ICICI Bank. Some of them deposited Re 1 to his Bank of India account via AEPS. They also revealed that Sharma had used his Aadhaar card for sale of organic goods on July 2.

Alderson further claimed he has obtained a Gmail account password of Sharma and advised him to change it. Unfazed TRAI chief responded: “No. Why should I change? It is working fine! Even if you hack, it is not because of Aadhaar!” Hackers claimed 14 details such as mobile numbers, residential address, date of birth, PAN number, voter ID number, telecom operator, phone model had been revealed so far.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman on Saturday had tweeted: “Now I give this challenge to you: Show me one concrete example where you can do any harm to me!”. Soon after he threw the challenge, alleged personal details of Sharma was posted online by hackers. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), however, maintained there was no breach to Aadhaar database.

UIDAI asserted that any information pertaining to Sharma wasn’t fetched from Aadhaar database or UIDAI’s servers. The organisation further clarified that the “so-called hacked” information about the TRAI chief was already available in public domain. “Sharma’s mobile number is available on National Informatics Centre’s (NIC) website as he was once Secretary IT. His date of birth is available in the Civil List of IAS Officers which is kept in public domain and his address is on Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) website because he is the Chairman.

They clubbed all these inputs and claimed to have breached the Aadhaar database. Aadhaar database is fully safe and secure and no such information about Mr Sharma has been fetched from UIDAI’s severs or Aadhaar database,” the statement added.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 30, 2018 08:21 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).