Swachh City Platform Suffers Data Breach Leaking 16 Million User Records

A threat actor by the name of LeakBase has shared a database
containing personal information allegedly affecting 16 million
users of Swachh City, an Indian complaint redressal platform.

Leaked details include usernames, email addresses, password
hashes, mobile numbers, one-time passwords, last logged-in times,
and IP addresses, among others, according to a report shared by
security firm CloudSEK^[1]
with The Hacker News.

The website^[2] is currently
inaccessible.

The Swachhata Platform is part of the Indian government’s
Swachh Bharat Mission^[3]
(translated as Clean India Mission) nationwide initiative to
“achieve universal sanitation coverage.”

According to Cyble^[4], the database comprises
101,718 unique email addresses and 15,835,111 unique mobile
numbers, putting users at risk of phishing, smishing, social
engineering, and identity theft.

The cybersecurity firm said that the breach possibly leveraged
compromised credentials belonging to administrator and
non-administrator accounts, likely obtained by means of a
brute-force attack.

An analysis of the dataset also showed that the latest login was
observed on May 20, 2022, indicating that the threat actor
performed the exfiltration activity on that date.

Users of the service are recommended to implement a strong
password policy, rotate passwords, and enable two-factor
authentication.