India's CERT-In to investigate alleged CoWIN breach; Reddit crashes as users protest API policy
The government of India has tasked the country's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) with investigating an alleged data breach revealing personal details of people vaccinated against Covid-19. Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar tweeted that a "Telegram bot" accessing previously stolen data was the culprit and that there was no direct breach. Reddit went down yesterday after thousands of 'sub-reddits' went dark to protest a new API policy. Also in this brief, Stellaris and Entrepreneur First ran a hackathon around generative AI. Notes: India's Health Ministry has dismissed reports of a data breach in the CoWIN (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network) portal, calling them "mischievous in nature," The Hindu reports. The ministry stated that the portal is safe and has adequate safeguards for data privacy. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has been asked to investigate the issue and provide a report. Electronics and Technology Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar clarified on Twitter that the CoWIN app or database was not directly breached, but rather data accessed by a Telegram bot seemed to be previously breached or stolen data from another source. Concerns have been raised about the integration of CoWIN with other apps such as Aarogya Setu and UMANG, which provide services for registration, appointment scheduling, and certification of COVID vaccinations. The current data breach appears to be possible by entering a person's mobile number, which would reveal sensitive information like identification numbers, gender, date of birth, and vaccination center details, according to The Hindu. Reddit experienced a widespread outage as thousands of its communities went dark to protest the company's new API policy, TechCrunch reports. The planned protest, aimed at challenging a policy that would eliminate third-party apps, caused Reddit's website to go down. The protest was in response to Reddit's new API pricing policy, which would significantly increase costs for developers, leading to the closure of many third-party Reddit apps. Salesforce has introduced its own AI Cloud, a suite of capabilities designed to improve customer experiences and company productivity through generative artificial intelligence (AI) for enterprise applications. The AI Cloud helps sales reps to auto-generate personalized emails, service teams to create tailored chat replies and case summaries, marketers to engage customers with personalized content, commerce teams to provide customized recommendations, and developers to auto-generate code and predict potential bugs. The AI Cloud Starter pack is available for $360,000 annually and includes essential components and an AI-readiness assessment from Salesforce Professional Services. Stellaris Venture Partners and Entrepreneur First organized a Generative AI Hackathon in Bengaluru focused on the theme "AI for India." More than 150 participants formed 60 teams to develop innovative AI solutions for India-specific challenges. Notable projects included an emergency response application, a generative video solution, and a platform for rural India to access government schemes. Uber has announced a new integration of Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa, with its Uber Eats app, developed by the company's engineers in India. The integration allows Uber Eats users in the US to track their food orders using their Amazon Echo devices.