Reports spread that the data of 15 million Kazakh citizens was leaked on the darknet

There have been reports that data on 15 million citizens of Kazakhstan has been leaked on the darknet. The Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of Kazakhstan has responded to this situation.

According to reports, an unknown hacker has put up for sale the personal data of Kazakhstanis on the darknet. The size of the file posted on the darknet is approximately 2.7 gigabytes, with 47 million rows of records.

According to information on social networks, the database is valued at 0.5 bitcoin, or about $ 32,000. The data set allegedly contains personal and contact information of citizens, such as passport data, phone numbers, email addresses, work information, scanned copies of documents and passwords.

The hacker claimed to have obtained this information by hacking the eGov portal. The ministry said it was currently conducting a technical investigation in conjunction with relevant services. As part of the investigation, a sample of the data will be analyzed and its source of origin will be determined.

The ministry said in a statement that "at the moment, there is no confirmed information that the e-government information systems were hacked and the data was obtained directly from eGov."

It was also noted that some of the leaked data did not correspond to the structure and format of the e-government portal.

"In particular, scanned copies of passports are not stored in eGov in the claimed form, and digital documents are in a different format. A statement by a Darknet user about the origin of the database cannot be considered as confirmation of a breach of the eGov system," the agency noted.

The technical investigation is ongoing and additional information is expected to be provided based on its results. The Ministry recommended that citizens adhere to basic digital security measures: not to provide SMS codes, passwords and EDS data to third parties, not to click on suspicious links, and to use different passwords for different services.

Recall that in early February, there were reports that the information systems of four organizations in Uzbekistan were subjected to a cyberattack, as a result of which the data of about 15 million citizens may have been leaked. At that time, the Minister of Digital Technologies of Uzbekistan Sherzod Shermatov noted that not the data of 15 million citizens, but about 60 thousand unique records were leaked.