The internal systems of the online travel platform, Cleartrip, suffered due to a breach. The Flipkart-owned start-up revealed this in an email sent to customers on 18 July and urged them to reset their passwords as a precautionary measure.
The message stated, “This is to inform you that there has been a security anomaly that entailed illegal and unauthorised access to a part of Cleartrip’s internal systems.” However, the travel company assured them that no sensitive information pertaining to a user’s Cleartrip account had been compromised due to this incident, apart from a few personal details.
The company added after informing customers about this data breach, it was taking appropriate legal action and recourse to ensure necessary steps are being taken as per the law. Walmart-owned Flipkart acquired a 100% stake in Cleartrip in 2021.
Growing Case Of Cyber Attacks
India has been witnessing a growing incidence of data breaches over the past couple of years. Earlier this month, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) lodged an FIR in connection with a cyber security incident that involved its email system.“Recently a cyber security incident has been noticed on the email system of SEBI which was undergoing a system upgrade and accordingly an FIR as per the relevant provisions of law has been filed,” the markets regulator said in a statement.
In May 2022, SpiceJet announced that it faced ransomware attacks that led to numerous flight delays and cancellations through the following day. In February 2021, Air India's passenger service system provider, SITA, was hacked. This resulted in the theft of the personal data of 4.5 million passengers.
India ranked sixth among the countries with the highest number of data breaches. 18 out of every 100 Indians have been hit by data breaches since 2004, according to Surfshark a cybersecurity company. It also stated that India’s breach rate was 740% higher than the first quarter, as of June 1, rising from five to 42 breached accounts a minute.
“Since 2004, 14.9 billion accounts have been leaked, and a striking 254.9 million of them belong to users from India. This makes India sixth in the world by the number of breached users,” the company said in its report this June.
