New Delhi | The Unique Identification Athourity of India (UIDAI) dismissing reports of hacking of Aadhaar Enrollment software on Tuesday blamed vested interests for creating confusion among people.
In an issued statement UIDAI said the claims about Aadhaar being vulnerable to tampering lacked substance and were totally baseless. It further added that “Certain vested interests are deliberately trying to create confusion in the minds of people which is completely unwarranted.”
The response came after a media report revealed that Aadhaar database, which contains the biometrics and personal information of over one billion Indians, “Had been compromised by a software patch which disables critical security features of the software used to enrol new Aadhaar users”. Claiming the hack the report added that any unauthorised person from anywhere in the world can generate Aadhaar ID using the patch which is freely available for Rs. 2,500.
The Statement further stated that “UIDAI has taken all necessary safeguard measures spanning from providing standardized software that encrypts entire data even before saving to any disk, protecting data using tamper proofing, identifying every one of the operators in every enrolment, identifying every one of thousands of machines using a unique machine registration process, which ensures every encrypted packet is tracked.”
Assuring the safety of the Aadhaar UIDAI further added that measures to ensure end-to-end security of resident data were taken including full encryption of resident data at the time of capture, tamper resistance, physical security, access control, network security, stringent audit mechanism, 24×7 security and fraud management system monitoring.
UIDAI also rejected the report which claimed that software patch available for as little as Rs 2,500 lets a user bypass critical security features such as biometric authentication of enrolment operators to generate unauthorised Aadhaar numbers. It clarified that no operator can make or update Aadhaar unless resident himself gives his biometric.
The Aadhar governing body also rejected another claim of ‘anybody is able to create an entry into the Aadhaar database, then the person can create multiple Aadhaar cards’. UIDAI said, “If an operator is found violating UIDAI’s strict enrolment and update processes or if one indulges in any type of fraudulent or corrupt practices, UIDAI blocks and blacklists them and imposes a financial penalty up to Rs. 1 lakh per instance. It is because of this stringent and robust system that as on date more than 50,000 operators have been blacklisted.”.
As an independent media platform, we do not take advertisements from governments and corporate houses. It is you, our readers, who have supported us on our journey to do honest and unbiased journalism. Please contribute, so that we can continue to do the same in future.
