New Delhi, June 11: Amid COVID-19 pandemic several fake news are doing rounds on various platforms of social media spreading misinformation to create panic among the masses. Recently, reports of CoWIN website being hacked surfaced after Data Leak Market website claimed that it had a database of 150 million COVID-19 vaccinated people of India. However, the Indian government denied the reports and termed them as fake. CoWIN Portal Not Working, Users Complain of ‘Appointment Unavailable’ Messages As They Experience Delays in Registration Process.

Dark Tracer, an autonomous cyber defence platform, also post a screenshot of the Data Leak Market website, which claimed that it had information of 150 million COVID-19 vaccinated people of India with their name, mobile number, aadhaar ID, GPS location, state etc. The dark Leak Website said that they were not the original leaker of the data but were reseller. COVID-19 Vaccination Certificate: You Can Flag Errors in Name, Birth Year and Gender on CoWIN Portal, Know Steps Here.

Reacting to these media reports, the Centre on Thursday debunked them. The government said that prima facie, these reports appear to be fake and that the portal stores all the vaccination data in a safe and secure digital environment. "There have been some unfounded media reports on the CoWIN platform being hacked. Prima facie, these reports appear to be fake," a statement issued by the Union health ministry said.

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Meanwhile, a probe has been launched into the matter. The Computer Emergency Response Team of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MietY) is investigating the matter. Dr R S Sharma, Chairman of the Empowered Group on Vaccine Administration (CoWIN), clarified that "our attention has been drawn towards the news circulating on social media about the alleged hacking of the CoWIN system. In this connection, we wish to state that CoWIN stores all the vaccination data in a safe and secure digital environment. No CoWIN data is shared with any entity outside the CoWIN environment. The data being claimed as having been leaked such as the geo-location of beneficiaries, is not even collected at CoWIN"

Earlier, French security researcher Baptiste Robert aka Elliot Alderson had also re-tweeted the post by the "Dark Leak Market", but later deleted it. The news surfaced on social media about data leak after a hacker group that goes by the name of "Dark Leak Market" claimed via a tweet that it has the database of about 15 crore Indians who have registered themselves on the CoWIN portal, and it is reselling the data for USD 800 since it is not the "original leakers" of the data. Till now, close to 24 people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in India.

Fact check

CoWIN Hacked? Fake News of Data Leak Market Having Information of 150 Million Indians Emerges on Social Media, Centre Debunks Claims
Claim :

India's COVID-19 vaccination webiste CoWIN has been hacked and Data Leak Market has information of 150 million vaccinated Indians.

Conclusion :

The claim is fake. CoWIN has not been hacked and data of COVID-19 vaccinated people is safe.

Full of Trash
Clean

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 11, 2021 11:48 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).