Real-time Location of More Than 11k Indian Buses are Exposed Online

Real-time location data of more than 11k indian buses exposed online from improperly secured ElasticSearch server, Kibana server, and InfluxDB administrative page.

Security researcher Justin Paine discovered the improperly secured servers that exposed significant amount of data from 27 Indian government agencies.

The server has no authentication enabled and the information is available for anyone connecting to the server with the corresponding port number, according to Paine.

The collected data differs between the government agencies, one agency stores rider’s full name and another agency using user-configured value which in case exposes the user’s email address.

Servers that contains details such as license plates, start-stop stations, route names, and GPS coordinates for each transportation agency such as usernames and emails.

The exposed details contains routename, timestamp, mode, vehicleNo, ID, endStopName, agency, city and the user Email address.

Following are the agencies

• ACTSL Allahabad City Transport Services Limited
• AICTSL Atal Indore City Transport Services Limited
• AMCTSL Agra-Mathura City Transport Services Limited
• BCLL Bhopal City Link Limited
• BMTC Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation
• BSRTC Bihar State Road Transport Corporation
• C-TYPE Could not locate anything conclusive
• CSTC Calcutta State Transport Corporation
• CTU Chandigarh Transport Undertaking
• DTC Delhi Transport Corporation
• HOHO Hop On Hop Off Sightseeing Bus Service, Govt. of Delhi
• IBUS Indore Bus Rapid Transit System
• JCBS Joint Council of Bus Syndicate
• JCTSL Jaipur City Transport Services Limited
• KCTSL Kanpur City Transport Services Limited
• KMRL Kochi Metro Rail Limited
• KP Could not locate anything conclusive
• LCTSL Lucknow City Transport Services Limited
• LNT Lukshmi Narayan Travels
• MCTSL Meerut City Transport Services Limited
• MINIBUS Could not locate anything conclusive
• NMPL Nagpur Mahanagar Parivahan
• TMT Thane Municipal Transport
• UCTSL Ujjain City Transport Services Limited
• UPSRTC Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation
• VVMT Vasai Virar Municipal Transport

The “gps_” indices contained real-time GPS information for a variety of agencies. This appeared to be the near real-time location of various buses (or trains) throughout India, reads blog post.

Researcher confirms the servers are accessible as back as from November 30, 2018, it is unclear how long the data are available and if anyone already having access to the information.

Paine reported the incident to India’s CERT on November 30, 2018, and the CERT team secured ElasticSearch, Kibana, and InfluxDB by December 22, 2018.

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