Aadhaar, PAN card, DL, passport of over 5,000 Indians leaked on internet by alleged Pakistani hacker

The dark web has once again proven to be a dangerous place for personal information, as a suspected Pakistani perpetrator has dumped approximately 5000 identity documents of Indian citizens on the site. This includes Adhaar, Driver's License, Passport, and PAN information. The same actor is also believed to have leaked the data on public forums. This makes it very easy for anyone, even without any technical background to access sensitive information for free using just Google Search.

According to India Today, the actor not only sold Indian citizens' identity documents in private Telegram channels but also publicly leaked the information on forums. The impacted individuals may only be 5,000, but public access makes it a grave threat for all victims of the cyber threat.

As per the report, an intelligence researcher was able to spot the transaction on a Pakistani forum on the dark web where the group of suspected threat actors was operating. The researcher, who remained anonymous, joined the group and observed that the majority of conversations were in Urdu and the channel's profile featured a picture of the Pakistani flag. 

After tracking the discussions for several days, the researcher discovered that the group claimed to have data dumps from various Indian government agencies and corporate bodies. Soon after, a threat actor posted a link to a 5.5 GB dump of Aadhar and PAN cards, containing 1059 Aadhar and PAN cards with scanned copies.

The researcher has also alerted CERT-In and Director of UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) regarding the sensitive leak.

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More Aadhaar, PAN, DL, and passport details leaked

According to further investigation by India Today, on the data breach, the same malicious actor who dumped the compromised data on the dark web had also leaked it on publicly accessible forums. The report suggests that additional 4,000 Aadhaar cards, PAN cards, passports, and driver's licenses were openly leaked on a website. The investigation also reveals that the same person also dumped a large number of Netflix account details, including passwords, and international identity documents on a hacker forum on the surface web.

Also read: 5G, Metaverse could be playground for cyber attacks