Co-WIN data breach reports: Here’s what Centre said

Amidst reports of the Co-WIN (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network) data breach, the Centre on Monday clarified that all such reports are without any basis and mischievous in nature. The Co-WIN portal of the Health Ministry is completely safe with adequate safeguards for data privacy, the Centre clarified.

Earlier some sections in the media reported that the purported breach has affected a lot of people including high-profile political leaders who had uploaded their information on the Co-WIN vaccination portal. The leaked data is reportedly available on social media platform Telegram and can now be accessed by any user.

The Centre today said that security measures are in place on the Co-WIN portal with Web Application Firewall, Anti-DDoS, SSL/TLS, regular vulnerability assessment, Identity & Access Management etc.

Only OTP authentication-based access to data is provided. All steps have been taken and are being taken to ensure the security of the data in the Co-WIN portal, reported the PIB.

Union Health Ministry has requested the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to look into this issue and submit a report. In addition, an internal exercise has been initiated to review the existing security measures of CoWIN.

CERT-In in its initial report has pointed out that the backend database for the Telegram bot was not directly accessing the APIs of the Co-WIN database, the PIB report added.