The UIDAI portal, which could only be accessed by admins of the Aadhaar database, is currently down following reports of the data breach on the portal. Typing the URL 'portal.uidai.gov.in' on your browser returns the message — ‘This site can’t be reached’. According to a report in the Tribune, a journalist from the paper was able to purchase unrestricted access to the Aadhaar database for as little as Rs 500. For the price, the journalist was made an Enrollment Agency Administrator for CSC SPV, apparently without any checks. Using the provided administrator login id, the journalist could log into the UIDAI portal and get unrestricted access. The portal has been allegedly down since the day the report was published. This access allowed the journalist to get details of Name, Address, PIN code, photo, phone number and email. For another Rs 300, the Tribune team was given software for printing an Aadhaar card, after entering the Aadhaar number for anyone. Twitter users had purportedly figured out a way to circumvent this issue and access the portal by using the portal's IP address instead of the full URL. The method no longer seems to work, yet it is unclear if it was patched out by UIDAI itself. Want to access the @UIDAI portal website? Just go to https://103.58.114.102/ and bypass the security warning. pic.twitter.com/OGkm1VfDi9 — Nemo (@captn3m0) January 9, 2018 UIDAI firewalls 5,000 officials On Tuesday, it was reported that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had restricted the access of about…
