CoWIN is safe and secure, many interests want to undermine it: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], June 13 : Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Tuesday reiterated that there was no breach in the CoWIN app and the platform remains "safe and secure". He added that allegations of data breaches were a "continued pattern" of people trying to undermine the strong digital infrastructures in India.

"There are many forces, there are many interests in the world that want to undermine Cowin, create question marks about CoWIN. Therefore, I believe yesterday's breach or alleged breach of Cowin was one more instance of people trying to target the Cowin app," Chandrasekhar told ANI.

He said Indian CERT (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team), the agency that is tasked to dealing with cyber security breaches, is, however, investigating the alleged breach matter.

"Telegram BOT (in question) was not from the CoWIN app. It was certainly data that was either fake, false, or had been collected from other sources by some third-party threat actor and the Cowin app, as has been reaffirmed by the health minister and the ministry, is completely safe and secure and has not been breached," he added.

On Monday, there were some media reports claiming the breach of data of beneficiaries who have received COVID vaccination through the app.

Certain posts on the social media have claimed that using a Telegram (online messenger application) BOT, the personal data of individuals who have been vaccinated is being accessed. It was reported that the BOT has been able to pull individual data by simply passing the mobile number or Aadhaar number of a beneficiary.

CoWIN was developed and is owned and managed by the Ministry of Health.