Data thrown up by Telegram bot not from CoWIN database: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

"That so called breach was not a breach of CoWIN. The data that the Telegram bot was throwing up was not from CoWIN," the Union Minister said during the Financial Express Digital Economy Conclave 2023.

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar at Financial Express Digital Economy Conclave 2023.

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Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Wednesday rejected claims of an alleged breach of data on the CoWIN platform. Speaking at the Financial Express Digital Economy Conclave 2023, the minister said the personal information of Indian citizens – including their Aadhaar and passport numbers – that was being shared on messaging platform Telegram was “to a large part” fake and was not sourced from the CoWIN database.

“That so called breach was not a breach of CoWIN. The data that the Telegram bot was throwing up was not from CoWIN,” the Minister said.

His statement comes days after reports of an automated account on Telegram that was allegedly sharing sensitive personal information of people who signed up for the CoWIN portal for their Covid-19 vaccination.

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Soon after reports of the data breach first surfaced, Chandrasekhar had said that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) immediately responded and reviewed the matter.

The Union Minister said that based on initial investigation, the allegedly “leaked” data was likely sourced from a database owned by the person who owned the Telegram bot. “Today I am saying on behalf of the government of India that was not from any government base, and certainly not from the Covid database,” he said.

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“That data in that person’s database, which is being seen today when you access the data bot, which has disappeared, that data to a large extent is fake,” the Union Minister went on to say. “CERT-In has identified that few of the entries they have seen are fake. So assuming for a minute that there is some data that is real. Today, there is nobody in the rule who does not agree that Aadhar data has been breached pre 2014 repeatedly.”

The Centre is still probing the origins of the bot. “So how old the data is, where did it come from and if this is a deliberate attempt to mimic a breach is being investigated,” Chandrasekhar said.

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