The Indian government has faced a severe cybersecurity issue with its cloud service, S3WaaS, which was supposed to provide a “secure and scalable” system for building and hosting government websites. However, a security researcher, Sourajeet Majumder, discovered a critical misconfiguration in 2022 that exposed sensitive citizen data, including Aadhaar numbers, COVID-19 vaccination records, and passport details. This data was inadvertently made public and was even indexed by search engines, making it accessible to anyone with internet access.
Despite reporting the issue to India’s computer emergency response team (CERT-In) and the National Informatics Centre with the help of the Internet Freedom Foundation, the problem persisted. CERT-In acted promptly to remove links containing sensitive files from public search engines after the initial report. However, Majumder noted that as recently as last week, the cloud service was still exposing some personal information, indicating ongoing security vulnerabilities within the system.
The situation escalated when it was revealed that sensitive data continued to spill online long after the initial discovery of the misconfiguration. Majumder, frustrated with the lack of comprehensive action, turned to TechCrunch to help get the remaining data secured. Following this, TechCrunch reported some of the exposed data to CERT-In, and Majumder confirmed that those files were no longer publicly accessible.
This incident has shed light on the substantial risks associated with digital data security, particularly in government systems that handle highly sensitive information. The persistent data exposure potentially puts citizens at risk of identity theft, scams, and social discrimination, especially when health-related data is involved. Majumder has called for this incident to serve as a wake-up call for security reforms, emphasizing the need for more robust protection measures to safeguard citizen data effectively.
