Star Health Insurance Stock Falls 2.5% Amid Massive Data Breach (image/pixabay)
A day after Star Health & Allied Insurance, one of India’s leading health insurers, faced a massive data breach with sensitive and personal information of over 3.1 crore (31 million) customers compromised, shares of the firm dropped 2.5 percent on October 10.
Personal details, including mobile numbers, PAN, addresses, birth dates, and other confidential medical records of customers, are allegedly available on a website created by a hacker named xenZen.
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The hacker claimed that the insurance company’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Amarjeet Khanuja, sold the data directly and later tried to renegotiate the deal, demanding more money for backdoor access on behalf of senior management.
The hacker is offering to sell the entire dataset for $150,000 and smaller batches of 100,000 entries each for $10,000.
Star Health Insurance released a statement clarifying that a thorough and rigorous forensic investigation led by independent cybersecurity experts is underway. The company further added that it is working closely with government and regulatory authorities at every stage of the investigation.
The insurance company further stated that Amarjeet Khanuja has been duly cooperating in the investigation and that the CISO has never arrived at any finding of wrongdoing by him till date.
The Madras High Court observed that the protection is essential to prevent the consistent leakage of sensitive data and referred the matter for a hearing scheduled on October 25.
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Reportedly, the hacker created Telegram bots to access data of over 31,216,953 crore customers updated till July 2024 and nearly 5,758,425 claims of the company available till early August.
The email conversation video included the email ID of Khanuja and showed the email chat along with a chat on an instant messaging app between the hacker and the senior company official while making the deal, according to NDTV.
