Over 7 million records of BHIM UPI app users were breached, including scans of Aadhaar cards, caste certificates, proof of residence, PAN cards, professional certificates and degrees, according to a report by VpnMentor. The breach included lists of BHIM's merchants and up to 1 million individual users, along with their UPI handles. VpnMentor's research team, led by Noam Rotem and Ran Locar, discovered the breach. According to AP News, Rotem is an Israeli security researcher, who most recently pointed out a breach in an app used by Israel's ruling conservative party. Rotem and Locar work on behalf of VpnMentor, and have exposed multiple security vulnerabilities. The data, totaling to 409 GB, was stored on an misconfigured Amazon Web Services S3 bucket belonging to cscbhim.in and was publicly accessible. The website is developed by CSC e-Governance Services Ltd, along with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY). VpnMentor discovered the breach on April 23, and it was closed nearly a month later on May 22. The firm first contacted CERT-in, India's nodal agency for cybersecurity threats, on April 28. The firm contacted CSC e-Governance Services on May 5. It contacted CERT-in again on May 22, after which vulnerability was finally closed. The leaked documents contain sensitive personal information. For instance, caste certificates include name, gender, religion, father's name, and taluk. The list of merchants and users linked them with their profession and UPI handles. Apart from address, gender, and father's name, Aadhaar also includes biometrics. BHIM is a UPI payments app developed…
