Hackers Steal Crucial Data from Haldiram’s; Demand $750K Ransom

Indian sweets and snacks brand Haldiram’s witnessed a ransomware attack on its servers by unidentified hackers who have allegedly stolen crucial data and demanded a ransom of $7, 50,000.

According to the FIR lodged at Noida Sector 58 police station, the incident took place on the intervening night of October 12 and 13 and the hackers may have stolen “entire or substantial data” of the company which runs several restaurants and outlets.

Officials said that the data stolen included financial and employee information, data on payroll, retail sales, purchases, inventory of the company.

According to an ET report, a Haldiram’s representative claimed the hackers have demanded a ransom of $7,50,000 in order to decrypt the servers of the company including all its files, data, applications, systems, etc and delete the stolen data from their own systems.

There have been several Indian platforms in the past which have faced data breaches. Earlier in May, it was reported that data of 4.75 crore Truecaller Indian users was found to be up for sale on the dark web. The development which was denied by the Swedish mobile application platform Truecaller India, was a result from its data leak.

India Remains Vulnerable To Cyber Attacks

On September 22, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeITY) told the Parliament that Indian citizens, commercial and legal entities faced almost 7 lakh cyberattacks till August this year.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has “reported 49,455, 50,362, 53,117, 208,456, 394,499 and 696,938 cybersecurity incidents during the year 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 (till August) respectively,” the MeITY said while responding to an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha regarding cyberattacks on Indian citizens and India-based commercial and legal entities.

According to an Inc42 report from January this year, government data shows that in 2019 alone, India witnessed 3.94 lakh instances of cybersecurity breaches. In terms of hacking of state and central government websites, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) data shows that a total of 336 websites belonging to central ministries, departments and state governments were hacked between 2017 and 2019. 

According to Nasscom’s Data Security Council of India (DSCI) report 2019, India witnessed the second-highest number of cyberattacks in the world between 2016 and 2018. This comes at a time when digitisation of the Indian economy is predicted to result in a $435 Bn opportunity by 2025.