Stories
BJP Attacks Rahul Gandhi Over Data Leak on 'Chhatron Ki Goonj' Website
- •BJP spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari accused Rahul Gandhi of 'playing with the present and future of students' due to alleged data exposure on the 'Chhatron Ki Goonj' website.
- •The website, used for Gandhi's campaign to address student issues, reportedly exposed mobile numbers and personal details of lakhs of students.
- •A security researcher, Shashi, claimed to have found vulnerabilities on Gandhi's personal website, rahulgandhi.in, and other Congress-affiliated platforms, potentially exposing over 1.5 lakh records.
- •The researcher stated that accessing these records did not require hacking but could be done through publicly available codes and API calls.
- •Despite alerting Congress and CERT-In about the critical vulnerabilities, the party did not publicly acknowledge the issue, though some pages were later disabled.
Key Questions Answered
Security expert Shashi reported that personal details, including mobile numbers and records for lakhs of people, were potentially exposed on Rahul Gandhi's Chhatron Ki Goonj website and other Congress-affiliated platforms without proper login protection. The BJP subsequently accused Rahul Gandhi of playing with students' futures and exposing them to cybercriminals.
The researcher stated that accessing the records did not require hacking or brute-force attacks. Instead, the information could be viewed by observing publicly available codes, scripts, and API calls, along with some guesswork.
The security expert alerted Congress functionaries and later contacted CERT-In after receiving no official acknowledgment. Following communication from a Congress technology team member on X, several pages collecting information and donations were disabled, and Congress stated the issues were fixed.
