With the increase in digitisation, data leaks are getting all the more frequent. In August, data of 235 million users of Instagram, Youtube and TikTok were exposed. And now, data of $2 million users were disclosed after Edureka suffers server breach. The leaked data included names, phone numbers and even addresses of users.
Details about the leak
On August 1 cybersecurity experts working on SafetyDevices discovered the leak. On following their protocols, they informed Edureka regarding the same on August 6. After they didn’t receive any response, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team was contacted. And on August 13 and server the breach was resolved.
According to the cybersecurity experts, the breach was directly linked to Edureka’s US-based Elasticsearch server. The server was left unsecured without any password protection. And so irresponsible nature of Edureka was the main reason for the breach. The data size was around 25 gigabytes and had 45 million records. But, because of many duplications, the estimated users were $2 million and were mostly from India and the US.
Though reports suggested that the user data was leaked, Edureka denied the claims and said the leaked data didn’t have any personal user data. The report by safety experts says that if user data was leaked, then it might be used by hackers to exploit users.
Data leaks are getting very frequent in India.
Every other week we have been hearing about new data leaks. But, the number of cyberattacks in India is far more significant. Reports from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that in 2020 Indians faced almost 7 lakh cyber attacks.
MEITY said that CERT-In, “reported 49,455, 50,362, 53,117, 208,456, 394,499 and 696,938 cybersecurity incidents during the year 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 (till August) respectively”.
The data shows a constant increase in the number of attacks over the years. The reports also said that a total of 336 websites including government, central ministries and more, were hacked between 2017-2019. Between 2016-18 India was on the 2nd spot in terms of data breaches with 300,000 attacks. This is a big deal because India’s digital economy is expected to grow multiple folds and might be $435 billion by 2025.
When they say privacy is a myth, I agree. What are your thoughts on so many data leaks in 2020? Do let us know in the comments below. Also, if you found our content informative, do like and share it with your friends.
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