The Infinite Brief

The patch—freely available for as little as Rs 2,500 (around $35)— allows unauthorized persons, based anywhere in the world, to generate Aadhaar numbers at will, and is still in widespread use.

This has significant implications for national security at a time when the Indian government has sought to make Aadhaar numbers the gold standard for citizen identification, and mandatory for everything from using a mobile phone to accessing a bank account.