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UMANG Data Leak: In the era of Digital India, where the government is continuously claiming to make online services safe and easy, a shocking incident to the country’s largest government service aggregator UMANG portal has come to light. It is being told that according to cyber security researchers, due to a serious security flaw in the portal, sensitive data of crores of Indians, such as Aadhaar number and EPFO’s UAN, could have become the target of cyber criminals. This revelation has raised new questions on the security arrangements of government digital platforms.

Researchers made a big revelation

Regarding this matter, cyber security researchers Akshay CS and Viral Vaghela have claimed that this security weakness present in the UMANG portal is not new but may have been present for many years. According to the report of The Hindu, it has been said that in some services of the portal, the Aadhaar number of the users was visible without adequate security, which is considered against the rules of the Aadhaar Act, 2016. But the core module of the UMANG app is said to be secure. Viral Vaghela said, “This entire system is unsafe at the design level itself.”

EPFO and LPG users are also in danger

Researchers have revealed that the impact of the security breach was not limited to the Aadhaar number only. The leaked data also included EPFO’s UAN number and information to LPG gas cylinder booking. Since EPFO ​​is one of the most used services on the UMANG app, it was claimed that cyber criminals could take advantage of this weakness to change a user’s bank account information and try to withdraw the PF amount.

Government accepted the flaw but researchers raised questions

Now, after receiving information from the IT Ministry and CERT-In, the government has admitted to encrypting the affected APIs. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology says that necessary steps have been taken to remove the security flaws. But researchers claim that the encryption implemented is still weak and can be easily bypassed.

Challenge of cyber security increased in the era of AI

It is seen that this matter has come to light at a time when Artificial Intelligence based tools and models can identify security vulnerabilities faster than ever. To deal with this challenge, IT Secretary S. According to Krishnan, CERT-In has created a special war room for security testing of government code. Where potential threats are being monitored with the help of open-source AI models. In such a situation, this incident also points to the need to continuously strengthen the security of government digital platforms.