No leak of sensitive emails, research data from IIIT Delhi*
Cybersecurity platform CloudSEK reported that it spotted what could be a data leak from the Portal for Health Informatics, the web portal for bioinformatics, health informatics, and genomics of the state university, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology in New Delhi.
Early this week, the organisation said in a post that its contextual AI-based digital risk platform XVigil discovered that an active threat actor named “UsNsA” shared on a cybercrime forum alleged 82 databases from PHI-IIIT Delhi for forum credits.
The alleged leaked files, which are approximately 1.8 gigabytes in total size, include emails and internal healthcare and vaccine development-related documents. Most of the files, it was noted, are already accessible to the public via the portal’s website.
According to CloudSEK, the exposed information could be used to gain initial access to IIIT Delhi’s data infrastructure. It could also be used for launching sophisticated ransomware attacks and exfiltrate more data.
However, IIIT-Delhi denied that the PHI portal encountered a breach, nor that the supposed leaked data included any sensitive information.
‘We would like to clarify that there has been no such data breach on our public platform. The platform in question is specifically designed to host non-sensitive, openly available datasets that can be used by researchers for further research purposes only. It does not contain any personal data, including emails, user details, or sensitive healthcare files,” it said in a statement.
“The reported list of databases and tables allegedly leaked during the breach, such as ovirustdb, leukemiabd, indiabiodb, HIV, bacvacdb, cancerdp, PHPMyadmin, dengi, and Crud, is factually incorrect. Though these data sets are available on the website, it doesn’t contain any personal information,” it added.
India’s National Health Authority launches ABDM ‘microsites’
The National Health Authority is launching microsites under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) to promote digital health adoption among small healthcare providers across states and union territories.
In a press statement, the agency said each microsite will be a cluster of small and medium-scale clinics, nursing homes, hospitals, labs, pharmacies, and other healthcare facilities that are ABDM-enabled.
Targeting to launch 100 microsites, NHA said its aim is to create a “small ecosystem within a particular geographic area where there is complete ABDM adoption and [where] the entire patient journey is digitised.”
IIIT Hyderabad leveraging VR for medical education
The International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad has put up a virtual reality facility at the Osmania Medical College to assist in medical education instruction.
According to a press release, the technology is now being used to teach neuroanatomy.
“Anatomy education is apt for the application of VR. This project makes a small beginning with neuroanatomy wherein the parts and structures inside the brain [are] explained with the help of 3D imagery, interactive manipulations, etc. We expect this small beginning to have a big impact in the future into teaching anatomy in the future, in collaboration with [OMC],” explained P J Narayanan, professor and director of IIIT-H.
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*This story has been revised and updated to include a response from IIIT-Delhi and their correction.
