Union Minister of State for Communications Chandra Shekar Pemmasani on Wednesday, July 24, confirmed the breach at state-owned telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) in the Lok Sabha. The breach took place on May 20, the Minister informed the House in a written response to a question raised by Congress MP Amar Singh. 

The Minister said that Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the nodal agency to tackle cyber security incidents, found that one of BSNL’s File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers had data similar to the sample of breached data which was found in CERT-In’s investigation.

“No breach in Home Location Register (HLR) of Telecom Network has been reported by the Equipment Manufacturer, therefore no service outage in BSNL’s Network,” asserted Pemmasani. 

The Union government has instituted an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) to audit telecom networks and suggest remedial measures to prevent future data breaches, the Minister announced. 

According to reports, the breach was flagged after a user named “kiberphant0m” posted on Breachforums, a website known for selling hacked data, claiming to have accessed around 278 gigabytes of data from BSNL. The breached data allegedly contained IMSI number (International Mobile Subscriber Identity), SIM details, HLR (Home Location Register), which is a database of all active users of a mobile network, DP card data and DP Security Key data which supports BSNL’s security systems. The user had intended to sell the data for $5,000. 

To prevent future cyber attacks, BSNL has changed access passwords to all similar FTP servers and instructed that endpoints (devices connected to the network) maintain air gaps, which is a security measure employed on computers to ensure that a secure computer network is physically isolated from unsecured networks for added protection.