BENGALURU: Even as cyber crime police continue their probe into the alleged misuse of Aadhaar data by Abhinav Shrivastava, cyber security experts feel that prosecuting a person responsible for data security at the National Informatics Centre will be essential in preventing such incidents.
Abhinav Shrivastava, the director of Qarth Technologies, had developed an app to provide e-KYC documents. The documents were allegedly provided by accessing the Aadhaar database without permission from UIDAI or other authorities.
Sources in cyber crime police said they will not be questioning any more people in connection with the case. However, they are trying to verify whether the accused had more access to Aadhaar data than indicated in the complaint by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).
According to police sources, they were verifying whether he misused the data collected by others who used the app.
A cyber expert, who did not wish to be named, said that the Central Identities Data Repository was not hacked. “However, Abhinav misused the flaws of the e-Hospital website, which was one of the KUAs to run his ‘Aadhaar e-KYC verification’ app. Since the key provided by UIDAI was not saved securely, he extracted it easily and used the key to run his app,” he said.
However, police say that during the investigations they do have come across few things where he was having more benefits from the data theft. They said that he had a larger view and had a organised plan. However, they refused to divulge any information.
The whole episode is clearly due to the loopholes in the NIC server, which hosts the e-Hospital website.
“However, none from NIC are being questioned or the contract of private parties who were running the
website has not been cancelled. People who caused the problem have not faced any consequences as there are no complaints against them,” he said.
Sources added that the cyber police are likely to write to UIDAI regarding the loopholes that were misused by the accused to prevent such incidents.Deputy Commissioner of Police Ram Niwas Sepat said that investigation in under progress and a charge sheet in connection with the case will be filed soon.