Indian telecom giant Airtel rubbishes data breach allegations

A threat actor claims they stole the sensitive personal information of 375 million subscribers of Indian telecommunication giant Airtel customers and leaked it on the dark web.

Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as Airtel, is one of the largest telecommunications services providers in India. Headquartered in New Delhi, Airtel operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands.

Recently, a threat actor going by the name “xenZen” has claimed to have infiltrated the internal network of the telecom company and allegedly stolen the sensitive personal information of 375 million customers.

According to screenshots shared on X, the hacker breached Airtel’s network in June 2024. The allegedly compromised data includes names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, residential addresses, parents’ names, nationality, SIM activation date, and photo IDs including government-issued identification numbers such as Aadhaar.

“xenZen” has asked for a ransom of $50,000 USD in XMR from the company and has threatened to leak the stolen data if the ransom isn’t paid.

Airtel responded to these allegations stating that it has not suffered any data security incident. In a statement shared with the media, the telecom giant said that the threat actor failed to provide any proof to support their claims of breaching the company’s network and stealing customer data.

“There has been a report alleging that Airtel customer data has been compromised. This is nothing short of a desperate attempt to tarnish Airtel’s reputation by vested interests. We have done a thorough investigation and can confirm that there has been no breach whatsoever from Airtel systems,” the company said.