Bengaluru, Jun 30 (IANS): Personal information pertaining to more than 4.5 million people is at stake following a reported data breach in Tamil Nadu's public distribution system (PDS).

The alarming data breach, which took place on June 28, has been reported by Technisanct, a cyber security and big data startup which says that it is possible only the tip of a far bigger data breach.

A link leaking 5.2 million user data, which includes 49,19,668 Aadhaar numbers, was uploaded on a popular hacker forum on June 28 by a vendor known to have shared the leaked databases in the past. Technisanct reported that major details, including the Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and Aadhaar number of citizens, beneficiaries' details and those of their relatives too, have been kept for sale in a data sharing platform.

The data breach has been reported to the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) by Technisanct. "Our team is further assessing the depth of breach with special emphasis on the number of Aadhaar records publicly exposed as it is crucial to protect the citizens from being a victim of fraud," said Nandakishore Harikumar, Founder & CEO of Technisanct.

It has also emerged that tnpds.gov.in was a victim of a cyber attack and was hacked by a cyber criminal group who goes by the name 1945VN. Over 68 million beneficiaries and 67 million Aadhaar are linked to this particular portal. There is a possibility that the identified breach is only a part of the information published by the vendor.