Huge breach in Airtel database! company strongly denies

New Delhi: Following the curious reports that a data breach has happened in Airtel India, the company categorically denied the same on Friday. The reports of the data breach suggested that a hacker had announced that they were about to sell the personal details of more than 37.5 crore Indian customers, The Indian Express reported.

Airtel India told The Indian Express that the company had carried out a thorough investigation to confirm that no instance of data breach had happened in their systems.

The reports of data breaches originated from revelations by an X handle that tracked who posted what on the dark web. The X user says that a hacker alias ‘xenZen’ tried to sell a database comprising details of more than 37.5 crore Airtel India customers. The leaked data include their mobile number, date of birth, father’s name, Aadhaar ID, email ID, and more at a going rate of $50,000 USD (Rs 41 lakh) to be paid in cryptocurrency, TIE reports.

When the hacker says the breach was done in June 2024 and they reportedly shared a data sample too, they claim to have been involved in an earlier instance of data breach targeting the diplomatic passport holders database maintained by the Union Ministry of External Affairs. Cybersecurity researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia flagged then that the details of more than 2.5 million Airtel subscribers had been uploaded on the website of a threat actor called ‘Red Rabbit Team’. However, the same was taken down after three months. However, Airtel maintained that there were no data breaches.

In the past, there were breaches reported on other telecom companies’ subscriber databases, including those of Jio and Vodafone Idea. The event of data breaches could have devastating impacts on people, such as their becoming victims of identity theft, financial fraud, unwanted marketing calls, etc.