Kiranapro blames the pre-employee after a large-scale data wipe, but will not deny hack
After losing significant data, Kiranapro co-founder and CEO Deepak Rabindran is sure that it was an internal data violation.
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In short
- Kiranapro app suffered severe data loss on 3 June
- The CEO claims that a former employee has deliberately erased the data of the app
- He says that the app will be live with better security in a few months
Earlier this week, Homegron Grocery-Tech Startup Kiranpro faced it, which is being described as its most important data loss to date. While the company initially suspected to play dishonesty by an external actor, a post recently suggested a different story by the CEO. Co-founder and CEO Deepak Rabindran took the X (East Twitter) to highlight the incident, stating that after an internal investigation, the company believes that a former employee may be responsible. According to him, a former employee, whose identity has not been revealed, deliberately erased all the company data. However, it is important to note that no concrete evidence has been presented yet to support this claim. India today attempted to contact the company for clarification, but received no response.
He posted, “After careful examination, we conclude that it was not a hack. An external party did not bypass our order or payment systems, exploited weaknesses, or security protocols. Our external security currency remains intact, and there is no evidence of any unauthorized access from outside the organization.” “Instead, it was an internal data violation. In particular, it was the result of the work done by a reliable internal employee who had legitimate access to our system. The person deliberately removed the important server log while he was being tested and/or edited, an action that goes against our policies, our principles and faith.
According to a report by Techcrunch, Bangalore-based startup Kiranpro revealed last week that he had lost access to his back-end server, and important data, including the source code of its app, was erased from GITHUB. On Friday, the company blamed a former employee for violation. However, in a follow-up interaction with Techcrunch, Kiranpro’s co-founder and CEO, Deepak Rabindran, admitted that the company had failed to cancel the previous employee’s reach after his departure, leaving the possibility open that his account’s misuse could be malicious.
“To complete a thorough investigation, we will need a full forensic review,” Rabindran said, saying that the matter will be carried forward for a formal opinion in the next stages to board, investors and legal lawyers.
Building on the same, Ravindran also exposed it in his post as well. He said that when the team is working to bring back the app live, it has also launched a full forensic report to determine the full scope and impact of the data deletion. He said, as part of its corrective measures, Kiranpro has increased the access control, increased audit logging, and restructured its multi-faced authentication protocol. Additionally, the firm has introduced one-to-one entry log for database access and reinforced internal policies through data governance and better training on privileged access. According to Breach’s severity, legal and disciplinary proceedings are held responsible.
Even after posting this long and heavy post, the CEO says that he cannot fully rule the external hack option. Techcrunch said that Ravindran has reservation about going to find the culprit. He said that to completely control the external hack option, the company would have to run a rigid IP scan, which means that a lot of resources will be consumed in this process. Therefore, the company has decided not to go deep into it.
While the company does not want to check the third-party hacking option, it is eager to call the former employee. In the report, Ravindran claims that the company has enough evidence such as gitbal response to file an official complaint. However, the next steps have not been revealed yet.
Tiping out the X post, the CEO stated that the Kiranapro app (launched in December 2024) would return in a few months, with better security measures. For Digital Commerce (ONDC), a buyer-supporting application integrated with the Open network of the Government of India, currently spreading in 50 cities with around 55,000 active buyers, giving around 2,000 orders each day, a buyer-honor application, a buyer-making application, which currently works for about 55,000 customers. In addition to traditional grocery apps, the set of Kiranpro is its voice-able interface, which supports many languages including Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and English, allowing users to place orders using simple voice commands.
