The Ministry of AYUSH website in Jharkhand has suffered a data breach, exposing more than 320,000 patient records, according to cybersecurity researchers. CloudSEK, the cybersecurity company behind the discovery, revealed that the breach involved a database of 7.3 MB, containing patient records containing personally identifiable information (PII) and medical diagnoses.
Additionally, the compromised data included sensitive details about doctors, including their PII, login credentials, usernames, passwords, and phone numbers. The breach was attributed to a threat actor known as “Tanaka.”
The Ministry of AYUSH website serves as a crucial source of information about various alternative medical treatments, including Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy. Researchers established a connection between the compromised data and the Ayush Jharkhand website by cross-referencing information shared by the threat actor, such as chatbot and blog post data, with publicly accessible data on the website.
The breach exposed approximately 500 login credentials (some in cleartext), contact information for 737 individuals who used the “Contact Us” form, 472 records containing PII details of doctors, and PII data for 91 doctors, including information about their postings.
This data breach poses significant risks, including potential account takeovers due to the leaked data, brute force attacks exploiting common or weak passwords, and an increased susceptibility to sophisticated phishing attacks.
