MUMBAI: Reliance Jio is investigating whether personal data of over 100 million of its customers had leaked onto a website, in what analysts said could be the first ever large-scale breach at an Indian telecom operator. Jio, India’s newest telecoms entrant, said that the data on the website, “Magicapk.com”, appeared to be “unauthentic” and that its subscriber data was safe and maintained with the highest security.
But people complained on Twitter about personal information of Jio users being publicly available on Magicapk.com, and some Indian media said that their checks had led them to believe the leak was real.
Jio declined to comment on the media reports.
“We have informed law enforcement agencies about the claims of the website and will follow through to ensure strict action is taken,” a Jio spokeswoman said.
Indian Express newspaper said it was able to cross-verify details on a number of Jio customers known to them.
“Indianexpress.com checked with some Jio numbers and found that details of numbers bought as late as last week are up on the site. However, it was not clear if all the numbers are available on the site, as a lot of queries were throwing a blank,” the newspaper reported.
Magicapk.com is showing as “suspended” since late on Sunday. Rony Das, a security analyst with Defencely, an online security firm, described the likely data breach as “dangerous”.
Aadhaar at risk: Many users had been registered for Reliance Jio services by using a 12-digit Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) provided number, commonly known as the ‘Aadhaar’ number. The Union Government has begun mandating the use of Aadhaar for everything from opening a bank account to filing tax returns.
The ‘Aadhaar’ number, which works on similar lines as US Social Security numbers, is unique to every Indian citizen and it stores biometric data of users in a centralised database.
Local tech website MediaNama said that Aadhaar information on the website had been redacted. It also said it had independently verified data on the website for multiple Jio numbers, and that the data was accurate for those numbers.
— Reuters
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