One person has been arrested by the Cyberabad Police over stealing and selling personal and hidden data of 66.9 crore people and organizations in 104 categories across 24 states and 8 metropolitan cities of the country. The accused has been identified as Vinay Bhardwaj.
The person behind the same was found possessing data of students of two ed-tech firms, Byjus and Vedantu. Besides that, according to police, he possessed the data of 1.84 lakh cab users of eight metro cities and a database of 4.5 lakh salaried workers of six cities and Gujarat state.
The accused also kept customer data of main organizations like GST (Pan India), RTO (Pan India), Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, Paytm, Phonepe, Big Basket, BookMyShow, Instagram, Zomato, Policy Bazar, Upstox, etc.
“Some of the important data held by the accused includes the data of defence personnel, government employees, PAN card holders, students data of 9th, 10th, 11 & 12th standard, senior citizens. Delhi electricity consumers, D-MAT account holders, mobile numbers of various individuals, NEET students, high net worth individuals, insurance holders, credit card and debit card holders,” the Cyberabad Police said.
He was operating through a website called “InspireWebz” in Faridabad, Haryana. He happened to sell databases to different clients through drive links. He accumulated databases from Amer Sohail and Madan Gopal.
“Data of NEET students with their names, father’s name, mobile number and their residence was also found with these accused. PAN Card database containing sensitive information on income, email ids, phone numbers, address etc was also found. Data of Government employees containing information on their name, mobile number, category, date of birth etc was also found,” the police said.
Later, police took away two smartphones and two laptops from the accused people. Kalmeshwar Shingenavar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crimes) Cyberabad Police issued notices to the concerned organization that will be served for violation of the IT Act.
Recently, Sun PharmaPharma reported a cyber breach that led to the compromise of several data and files. As per the company, the firm is striving for the assistance of worldwide cybersecurity professionals and upgraded safety protocols.
“The Company is currently unable to determine other potential adverse impacts of the incident, including but not limited to additional information security incidents, increased costs to maintain insurance coverage, the diversion of management and employee time or the possibility of litigation,” the exchange filing stated.
Another episode of a ransomware attack was in the Amazon-owned Ring. The group’s website stated, “There’s always an option to let us leak your data.” The attack was later found to be carried out by ALPHV, a ransomware organization.
