With immense confidence in UIDAI, TRAI chief R S Sharma took to Twitter to share his Aadhaar details. He challenged hackers to try to cause any harm and opened up an attack on himself. Soon, his personal details such as phone number, email account, bank account and more became public. Following the same, the hackers deposited Re. 1 in his account.
This doesn't seem to be the end of the issue as things have took a serious turn. On July 30, Kavita Sharma, daughter of R S Sharma has received an email. The email threatened that her father's email accounts have been compromised and his PNB (Punjab National Bank) was "under imminent threat of being hacked".
The threatening email
The mail has been copied to two journalists with The Wire along with some from other publications. It reads, "By posting a challenge on social media, RS Sharma has turned out to be an embarrassment to the nation and put a bounty on his accounts for hackers. If you do not respond to this email in the next 24 hrs. The consequences would be regretful. Any tip off to law enforcement agencies, would be detrimental. You are advised to act wisely".
The report adds that one of the journalists copied in the mail immediately tried to file a complaint on Delhi Police's website but faced some technical difficulties.
R S Sharma's daughter warned
The threatening email warns that if Kavita fails to respond to the instructions in the email, then a remote malware will be installed on her father's smartphone and all his communications will be intercepted and archived. The emails he receives will be encrypted and only on paying the demanded ransom, the hacker will decrypt it. It warns that if she fails to comply, the details will be released to the media.
UIDAI denies data breach
Notably, after his Twitter dare, his Gmail and Yahoo! email addresses, frequent flyer number, date of birth, mobile numbers and WhatsApp display picture have been made public. However, UIDAI denies that the hackers would have got the personal information of R S Sharma from his Aadhaar card. It claims that he is a government official and most of his details are already public. So, it is yet to be confirmed if the hacker gained access to these details from the Aadhaar database.