The Bengaluru Police on Tuesday arrested an IIT-Kharagpur graduate for hacking and illegally accessing Aadhaar data through the Unique Identification Authority of India server, reported The Hindu.
The UIDAI accused 31-year-old Abhinav Srivastav, who is said to be an Ola employee, of accessing Aadhaar information in January 2017 through an app named Aadhaar e-KYC. They later filed a complaint against him, after which he was arrested on August 1.
“Srivastav had developed an e-KYC verification mobile application and hosted the same on (Google) Play Store,” the police said, according to The Times of India. “Anyone clicking on this app would enter the e-hospital service, which is a central government scheme with Aadhaar-related details in it.”
The police said Srivastav had developed five apps and made Rs 40,000 through advertisements displayed on them. “I had developed an Aadhaar e-KYC verification app and put it on Google Play Store. I got Rs 40,000 from ads shown on the app between January and July this year,” Srivastav was quoted as saying by The Times of India.
The police are now scanning all his apps. The Aadhaar e-KYC app was downloaded more than 50,000 times since its launch in January, the police said.
Police suspect Srivastav stole personal details including addresses, mobile phone numbers, email addresses, ages, and the gender of at least 40,000 Aadhaar cardholders. The police, however, added that he did not access their biometric data like fingerprints and iris scans.
Srivastav was working with ANI Technologies, which owns the Ola brand, as a software development engineer.
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