Orchestrated campaign to malign Aadhaar: Nilekani

Agencies
January 11, 2018

Bengaluru, Jan 11: Former Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) chairman Nandan Nilekani said there was an "orchestrated campaign" to malign Aadhaar.

He was reacting to the filing of an FIR on The Tribune newspaper report relating to an Aadhaar data breach.

"There is 100% an orchestrated campaign to see how Aadhaar gets maligned, yes absolutely," Nilekani told ET Now on the sidelines of the Infosys Science Foundation Awards here.

The Delhi Police had on Monday registered the FIR on a complaint by an UIDAI official following a newspaper report on the data breach of more than 1 billion Aadhaar cards, naming the journalist who wrote the story.

The official told the police that the correspondent, posing as a buyer, had purchased a service offered by anonymous sellers over WhatsApp that provided unrestricted access to details of Aadhaar numbers.

Nilekani said the issue has been blown out of proportion as the Aadhaar system has far too many security layers and it is not possible to randomly penetrate it.

"If you are just taking a negative view (on Aadhaar) and not a constructive view, then you also have other (negative) reactions. I think everybody has to accept that Aadhaar is here to stay," he said.

The Aadhaar is here to stay because as many as 119 crore people have it, 550 million have linked the numbers to their bank accounts and Rs 95,000 crore has been transferred into Direct Benefit Transfer accounts, he said.

Nilekani said he was very confident of the Supreme Court upholding Aadhaar under the fundamental right of privacy because it meets the test of the law.

Replying to a query, he welcomed putting in place a two-layer security system to reinforce privacy protection for Aadhaar ID number holders by the UIDAI.

"I think this is a very significant announcement by the UIDAI and in some sense it really makes the case against it go away," he said.

The former UIDAI chief said it has introduced a virtual identification for ID holders so that the actual number need not be shared by people to authenticate their identity.

Simultaneously, it has further regulated the storage of the Aadhaar number within various databases, he said.

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coastaldigest.com news network
January 6,2020

She is one of a few beauty queens who give equal importance to both modelling and academic growth. Within months after completing her MBA in Finance and HR, Shifali Saldanha won Miss India Continent 2019 first runner-up and Miss Glory of International 2019 held in Mumbai.

An alumna of St Aloysius College (AIMIT), this 23-year-old Mangalurean is now a much sought after budding model. “I am enjoying the moment and would like to go with the flow,” says the much-loved daughter of Stephen Saldanha and late Anupama Saldanha.

Over the course of past two years, Ms Saldanha has experienced various nerve-wracking moments. She was shattered when her beloved mother lost battle with cancer and bid adieu to the world a couple of years ago. Yet, she serenely braved all the challenges. Her ‘never give up’ attitude helped her to scale new heights amidst misfortunes and pains.

Speaking to coastaldigest.com about her success in Miss India Continent 2019, which was organised by Dr Mahesh Yadav of Aman Gandhi Film Productions, Ms Saldanha said 15 contestants from different parts of the country were shortlisted for the finale, which had five diverse rounds. 

“The meet and greet session was my favourite phase in the competition as it was an opportunity to interact with the participants from different parts of the country,” recalls the multi-talented, who dreams big. 

The leggy lass’ success wasn’t accidental one. A trained singer and multilingual anchor, Ms Saldanha was already a known figure in coastal Karnataka. She had won the titles Miss Karnataka International- Multimedia 2018, and Miss Beautiful Eyes Mangaluru 2018.

Being a moderate feminist, who carries a go-getter attitude, Ms Saldanha calls upon every woman to be optimistic, challenging and goal-focused.

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News Network
June 20,2020

New Delhi, Jun 20: With the highest single-day increase of 14,516 COVID-19 cases reported in the last 24 hours, India's coronavirus count stood at 3,95,048 on Saturday.

The death toll has gone up to 12,948 in the country with 375 persons succumbing to the infection.

According to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the total number of cases includes 1,68,269 active cases, 2,13,831 cured/discharged/migrated and 12,948 deaths.

Maharashtra with 1,24,331 cases continues to be the worst-affected state in the country with 55,665 active cases while 62,773 patients have been cured and discharged in the state so far. The death toll due to COVID-19 stands at 5,893 in the state.

The number of confirmed cases in Tamil Nadu also crossed the 50 thousand mark on Saturday and reached 54,449.

The national capital is the third-worst affected by the infection in the country with the count reaching 53,116 today.

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Agencies
July 18,2020

Days after Twitter accounts of several billionaires were hacked to engineer a crypto scam, Twitter on Saturday said it is embarrassed, disappointed and, more than anything, sorry for what happened with some of its high-profile users as attackers successfully manipulated its employees and used their credentials to access internal systems, including getting through the two-factor protections.

In the first detailed summary of the "social engineering attack" via a crypto scam that hit at least 130 users this week, Twitter said for 45 of those accounts, the attackers were able to initiate a password reset, login to the account and send Tweets.

"We are continuing our forensic review of all of the accounts to confirm all actions that may have been taken. In addition, we believe they may have attempted to sell some of the usernames," the micro-blogging platform said in a statement.

For up to eight of the Twitter accounts involved, the attackers took the additional step of downloading the account's information via "Your Twitter Data" tool.

This is a tool that is meant to provide an account owner with a summary of their Twitter account details and activity.

"We are reaching out directly to any account owner where we know this to be true. None of the eight were verified accounts," said Twitter.

The company said the attackers were not able to view previous account passwords, as those are not stored in plain text or available through the tools used in the attack.

"Attackers were able to view personal information including email addresses and phone numbers, which are displayed to some users of our internal support tools," informed Twitter.

In cases where an account was taken over by the attacker, they may have been able to view additional information, Twitter added, saying its forensic investigation of these activities was still ongoing.

"We are actively working on communicating directly with the account-holders that were impacted".

The company said it will soon restore access for all account owners who may still be locked out as a result of the remediation efforts.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the Twitter crypto scam can be traced back to a group of hackers who congregate online at OGusers.com, a username-swapping community where people buy and sell coveted online handles.

The report said that the Twitter hack is not from Russian, Chinese or North Korean hackers but was done by a group of young people, "one of whom says he lives at home with his mother".

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