TRAI chairman RS Sharma faced further embarrassment on Sunday after ethical hackers claimed to have accessed to his bank account details and deposited Re 1 to him via the Aadhaar-Enabled Payment Service using apps such as BHIM and Paytm, and through IMPS.
The hackers also posted the screenshots of the transaction on social media, reported The Times of India.
This came a day after an all-out war erupted on Twitter after Sharma on Saturday disclosed his Aadhaar number on the microblogging site and challenged everyone to show how mere knowledge of the unique number could be used to harm him, triggering a deluge of tweets that claimed to disclose his personal details from PAN to mobile number.
The challenge by Sharma evoked an immediate response from the Twitterati, with some users, including French security expert operating under the pseudonym Elliot Alderson, (@fs0c131y), claiming to have dug up his mobile number, photographs, residential address, date of birth and even chat threads using the information, while others warned him about the perils of throwing such a dare on the social media platform.
On Sunday, the hackers, including Alderson, Pushpendra Singh, Kanishk Sajnani, Anivar Arvind, and Karan Saini, claimed to have obtained details of Sharm's 14 items, including mobile numbers, residential address, date of birth, PAN details, voter ID number etc. Aravind and a few others sent Re 1 to his Bank of India account via AEPS, added the ToI report.
NDTV reported that one user claimed to make a fake Aadhaar ID that was accepted by Facebook and Amazon Cloud.
The UIDAI on Sunday asserted that the personal details of Sharma being put out on Twitter are not from the Aadhaar database or its servers, and that "so called hacked information" is easily available with a simple search on Google and other sites, without using the 12-digit unique identity number.
In a statement, the UIDAI said: "...Any information published on Twitter about the said individual...RS Sharma was not fetched from Aadhaar database or UIDAI's servers.
"In fact, this so–called 'hacked' information (about Sharma's personal details such as his address, date of birth, photo, mobile number, e-mail, etc.) was already available in the public domain as he being a public servant for decades and was easily available on Google and various other sites by a simple search without Aadhaar number."
Rubbishing all claims that personal details of Sharma were dug up using his Aadhaar number, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said it "condemns such malicious attempts by few individuals to malign the world's largest unique identity project - Aadhaar".
Many users had claimed that the they got Sharma's personal details "by hacking Aadhaar database", but added such a claim was "farce" and that no such information about Sharma has been fetched from either its severs or Aadhaar database. The Aadhaar database is safe, the UIDAI added.
(With PTI inputs)
