In yet another Aadhaar-based data leak case, the Andhra Pradesh police have arrested a member of an inter-state gang with a hard-disk containing a database of one lakh Aadhaar numbers and fingerprints, mobile phones, a scanner, a fingerprints device and a monitor, according to a report by The News Minute. The gang is mainly involved in cloning Aadhaar-linked finger prints to withdraw money from people’s bank accounts, a financial crime mainly related to the Aadhaar-Enabled Payment System (AePS). The AP police’s investigation revealed that the gang could get their hands on the fingerprints of people through “intermediary payment gateway apps for AePS,” the TNM report said. AePS is an NPCI-developed system for financial inclusion which enables transactions through Aadhaar authentication using just the bank name, Aadhaar number and fingerprint of the individual captured during enrolment. The suspects then obtained the machines for cloning fingerprints and got access to the OTP required for siphoning off the money. They were able to loot at least 440 persons across various states without the knowledge of the individual account holders, the police informed. To understand how the fingerprints are cloned, check this report by MediaNama. The 27-year-old arrested suspect Seshnath Viswakarma was tracked down in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh and the police is on the lookout for his accomplices, according to KKN Anburajan, the Superintendent of Police at Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh. Why does this matter? AePS is a significant component of the social welfare system linked to several government schemes where cash benefits…
News
Andhra Pradesh: Gang uses cloned Aadhaar-linked fingerprints to steal money from bank accounts
The gang accessed fingerprints of people through intermediary payment gateway apps for Aadhaar-Enabled Payment System, the AP police said
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...