French hacker Elliot Alderson flags 'security issue' on PM Modi's website

French hacker Elliot Alderson on Thursday flagged a security issue on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's website. He informed the PM on Twitter and asked his team to reach out to fix the issue. Alderson wrote, "Hi PM Narendra Modi, A security issue has been found on your website. Can you contact me asap to fix the issue?"

Alderson, further said that a contact was established with the prime minister's website team and they have disclosed the issue.

Thereafter, Alderson stated the issue was related to data leak from PM Modi's website. This information was first revealed by cybersecurity firm Cyble.

A few days back, Cyble Inc claimed that it found data leak from multiple databases from the prime minister's website. 'Cctransactions', and personal details (name, IDs, contact information) of over 570,000 PM Modi's followers were found to have been leaked. This happened a month after reports emerged that PM Modi's Twitter account, called narendramodi.in got hacked.

Image source: Cybleinc.com

Image source: Cybleinc.com

Cyble added, another database showcased details of financial transactions made by donors for contributing to the fund. "This includes non-public data such as bank_ref_no, payment_mode, etc. We estimate that out of 574,000 users listed on the database, over 292,000 of them appears to have made donations to the concerned website only," stated Cyble.

Image source: Cybleinc.com

Donation details for a range of causes, such as coronavirus relief, Beti  Bachao, Swachh Bharat, as well as supporting BJP were found to have been leaked.

On September 3, Twitter confirmed that the personal Twitter account of PM Modi was hacked. This was followed by a series of tweets from the account asking followers to donate to the PM's National Relief Fund via cryptocurrency.

However, Cyble said when they later investigated, they found, the security breach was due to an account linked to the website of narendramodi.in. On October 10, Cyble was tipped off that the database of the website is available in the dark web.

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