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IRCTC manages the Indian Railways' catering, tourism and ticketing operations, which cover approximately 600,000 ticket bookings per day. AND could not independently verify if data on pbadengers had been stolen during the two years of the existence of the bug. Security researcher, Avinash Jain, has discovered the vulnerability that in August on IRCTC's website and link to mobile applications that connect to a third-party insurance company for a free travel insurance.
The bug allegedly gave attackers access to pbadenger information, such as name, age, gender, and names of insurance candidates, without their knowledge or consent. "In less than 10 minutes (after finding the bug), we were able to read nearly 1,000 information about pbadengers and candidates," said Jain, who later wrote to IRCTC to warn them of the problem.
He estimates that the vulnerability has left at least 200,000 pbadengers and the details of their nominee exposed to the attacker. The bug, reported to IRCTC on August 14th, was acknowledged and corrected on August 29th.
It is interesting to note that the Indian Railways decided to terminate the compulsory free travel insurance from September 1, allowing users to subscribe or not to take out travel insurance. IRCTC did not answer any questions about this.
In December 2016, IRCTC implemented a free travel insurance for all persons who booked tickets via its website or mobile application. This implied that the IRCTC shares the pbadenger details of all travelers with third party insurers to underwrite the coverage.