Chairman of the Empowered Group on Vaccine Administration (EGVAC) R.S. Sharma has clarified that "the claims of so-called hackers on the dark web, relating to alleged hacking of the CoWIN system and data leak, is baseless".

 

"We continue to take appropriate steps as are necessary, from time to time, to ensure that the data of the people is safe with CoWIN," Sharma said.

 

He also said that the matter of the alleged hacking of the CoWIN system has now been investigated by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MietY).

 

The Centre on Thursday also refuted the claims through a statement after reports surfaced that CoWIN has been hacked and the database of 15 crore people is up for sale.

 

The government then said that its attention has been drawn towards the news circulating on social media about the alleged hacking of the CoWIN system.

 

"In this connection, we wish to state that CoWIN stores all the vaccination data in a safe and secure digital environment. No CoWIN data is shared with any entity outside the CoWIN environment. 

 

"The data being claimed as having been leaked such as geo-location of beneficiaries is not even collected at CoWIN. The news prima facie appears to be fake. However, we have asked the Computer Emergency Response Team of MietY to investigate the issue," it had said.

 

The news circulated after a hacker group that goes by the name of 'Dark Leak Market' claimed via a tweet that it has the database of about 15 crore Indians who have registered themselves on the CoWIN portal, and it is reselling the data for $800 since it is not the "original leakers" of the data.