The Jammu and Kashmir Rural Livelihoods Mission (JKRLM) has suffered a massive data breach comprising 89,294 lines of data. The exposed records include highly sensitive personal information such as User IDs, passwords, full names, email addresses, gender, date of birth, and other potentially identifiable information.
The breach exposes individuals associated with JKRLM to risks of identity theft, phishing attacks, and other cybercrimes. The scale and sensitivity of the leaked data have amplified concerns regarding the government’s implementation of cyber security measures.
The Jammu and Kashmir Rural Livelihoods Mission, or UMEED, is a poverty alleviation program focusing on women empowerment, financial inclusion and sustainable livelihoods. The program aims to remove rural poverty at the earliest.
The initiative plays a crucial role in uplifting rural livelihoods and enhancing economic development in the region. The breach of such a critical mission’s database could have far-reaching implications, undermining the trust of its beneficiaries.
Threat actors have been targeting the Indian government and non-government/private entities lately. India recorded more than 369 million cyber attacks, averaging 702 per minute in 2024.
In the first week of 2025, the State Child Protection Society (SCPS) of Madhya Pradesh was hit by the FunkSec ransomware, exfiltrating more than 2 GB of sensitive data from the SCPS system.
Recently, India’s edtech platform Wissenhive was targeted by the FunkSec ransomware group. The attackers stole over 32,000 records containing data from 2021 to 2022, including information like admin details, hashed passwords, and personal identifiers.
Also, reports show that over 90 Indian government websites are hosting scam links. These include high-profile institutions like the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the India Post. These websites redirect users to dubious sites promoting online and betting scams. Some websites in states such as Haryana and Maharashtra have also been implicated in this scam.
Last week, Indus Telecommunication giant Indus Tower was hit by the Medusa ransomware group. The group demanded $500,000 as ransom to decrypt the company’s data.
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