In a shocking report, CloudSEK's XVigil AI platform, a cybersecurity agency, claimed that it discovered a bad actor leaking the source code of the Integrated Road Accident Database (iRAD) website, an initiative of the Indian Government. This code was shared for free, and an SQL injection led to the retrieval of over 10,000 user records.
For starters, a source code can allow hackers to understand the functioning of a website and plant sophisticated cyber attacks in future. It enables a hacker to exfiltrate data, according to the report. Further, according to IANS, the firm informed the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) of the breach and urged immediate action as remedial measures to protect user privacy and web data.
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The data of iRAD, a MoRTH initiative, was posted on an underground cybercrime platform. As per the report, the size of the file was 165MB. Most of them were written in Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), a language used to build webpages.
Details in the code ranged from usernames to passwords. If these data were misused, a hacker could have sent messages to registered recipients. This code had references to "sms.gov.in", a service used by the government to send SMS to citizens.
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In another follow-up post, the attacker uploaded data of 10,000 users of the webpage obtained via the vulnerable application programming interface (API). The details include name, mobile, email, password, username, and more. The cybersecurity firm verified a few contact numbers via Truecaller, which matched.
Besides the personal data of individual users, the database had a list of official email IDs and passwords. Owing to these details, a hacker might be able to take over these accounts and use them for malicious intent, such as sneaking into web infrastructure. The policy of multi-factor authentication, patching vulnerable endpoints and monitoring repositories is recommended.