1/22/2021 Financial information of 3.

3 lakh Indians put on dark web: Expert - Times of India

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Financial information of 3.3 lakh Indians put on dark

web: Expert
TNN | Jan 22, 2021, 07.27 AM IST

NEW DELHI: Sensitive financial details, including bank accounts and KYC
documents of nearly 3.3 lakh Indian users, were allegedly leaked on the
dark web by a hacker group on Wednesday, according to independent
cyber security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia. The alleged leak was the
result of a breach in the database of cryptocurrency exchange company,
BuyUCoin.

In an email response to TOI, BuyUCoin denied that there was a breach in

its database. Rajaharia, however, said that ShinyHunters, the hacker group
which had also claimed responsibility for the Juspay breach, was behind
the leak. The group has dumped 6 GB of Indian crypto users on the dark
web for free. He shared screenshots of the data dump with TOI.

The allegedly leaked database contains people’s user names, phone numbers, PAN numbers, email addresses, their bank
details, including IFSC code and the type of account. BuyUCoin collects this information to purchase cryptocurrencies.

“The leaked data contains sensitive information, which can be used by hackers to make transactions in cryptocurrency. In such
a case, the onus is on the firm to inform its users that there has been a breach,” Rajaharia said, adding that cryptocurrency
exchange is largely unregulated in India and there needs to be stronger oversight around it.

In an email response, Buy-UCoin told TOI, “In the mid of 2020, while conducting a routine testing exercise with dummy data,

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1/22/2021 Financial information of 3.3 lakh Indians put on dark web: Expert - Times of India

we faced a ‘Low Impact Security Incident’ in which non-sensitive, dummy data of only 200 entries was impacted. We would like
to clarify that not a single customer was affected.” The firm also said “BuyUCoin rejects incorrect information in some media
reports that data of 3.5 lakh users was compromised”.

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