A report says, hackers have claimed an Airtel data breach that affected as many as two million subscribers. Sensitive information such as addresses, Aadhar card numbers, and gender were up for sale on the internet.
The team behind the reported Airtel data breach was looking to sell the information online for USD 3,500 (approx Rs 2.55 lakh) worth of Bitcoin. Although the website is offline now, the hackers still have possession of the data and could sell it elsewhere in the future. The information has been revealed by Rajshekhar Rajaharia, an Internet security researcher.
VARINDIA on an interaction with Rajshekhar revels that, the hackers even communicated with Airtel security teams and then tried to blackmail the company and extort $3500 in Bitcoins from it.
A Hacker Group alleged uploaded "shell" in @airtelindia Server. Now selling all India Airtel subscribers data including Aadhaar Number. Posted 2.5 Million as sample data. (in Jan 2021). Red Rabbit Team uploaded more One Million Records of Airtel India after denial of Airtel that they are safe and have not been hacked by our team. Here We are exposing more One Million (3rd Million) here is the Link of our newly Uploaded Websites
However, it seems that the hackers failed and in the frustration, they put up the data on sale on the web, by creating a website for it and showing a sample of the user details that they had. This website is no longer available. India Today Tech learns that the data may not have been leaked from Airtel's systems or servers.
Instead, it could have been leaked from other sources, possibly the government agencies, which get access to some of the telecom data for security purposes. This is likely to be why the leaked 25 lakh -- 2.5 million -- numbers belong to subscribers in the J&K region.
A tweet says that, @airtelindia already aware about this alleged breach since last 3 months. Hacker posted all email conversations with airtel too. They also posted POC video. What steps taken to remove and patch? I am also an Airtel Subscriber
According to Rajaharia, the hackers allegedly uploaded details of 2.5 million Airtel subscribers as a sample in January 2021 and tried to "extort money" from the company. "Everything was posted on the web... not on the dark web," he said
The website having data of 2.5 Million subscribers has been removed now. Data was uploaded on a [dot].in Domain.
Red Rabbit Team tried to extort Airtel for the same amount. This is proven by a video recording of emails between the hackers and Airtel. Timestamps on said emails suggest that the breach happened on December 12, indicating that Airtel was aware of the issue for quite some time, but chose to remain tight-lipped about it.
