A safety lapse by one among India’s largest pharmacy chains allowed outsiders to achieve full administrative management of its platform, exposing buyer order information and delicate drug-control capabilities, TechCrunch has completely realized.
The problem affected DavaIndia Pharmacy, the pharmacy arm of Zota Healthcare, which operates a big community of stores throughout India. Safety researcher Eaton Zveare informed TechCrunch that he found the flaw after figuring out insecure “tremendous admin” utility programming interfaces on DavaIndia’s web site and privately shared particulars with Indian cybersecurity authorities.
The bug is now mounted, and Zveare disclosed his findings.
The publicity comes as Zota Healthcare quickly scales DavaIndia Pharmacy’s retail enterprise. The Gujarat-headquartered firm operates greater than 2,300 DavaIndia shops throughout India, together with 276 new outlets introduced in January, and plans to add another 1,200 to 1,500 over the following two years.
Zveare informed TechCrunch that the flaw stemmed from insecure admin interfaces, which allowed unauthenticated customers to create “tremendous admin” accounts with excessive privileges.
With that stage of entry, an attacker might view 1000’s of on-line orders containing buyer data, modify product listings and costs, create low cost coupons, and alter settings governing whether or not sure medicines required a prescription, the researcher mentioned.
Primarily based on system timestamps, Zveare mentioned the weak administrative interfaces appeared to have been stay since late 2024. The entry uncovered practically 17,000 on-line orders and administrative controls spanning 883 shops, he mentioned, permitting adjustments to product pricing, prescription necessities, and promotional reductions. Zveare mentioned the entry allowed edits to web site content material that would have been used for defacement or disruption.
Pharmacy order information could be notably delicate, as it could reveal details about an individual’s well being circumstances, medicines or different personal purchases. Publicity of such information, even with out proof of misuse, carries heightened privateness and patient-safety dangers in contrast with different shopper data.
“Buyer data was linked to their orders,” mentioned Zveare. “This contains title, telephone numbers, electronic mail IDs, mailing addresses, complete quantity paid, and the merchandise bought. Since this can be a pharmacy, the merchandise being bought could possibly be thought of personal and even embarrassing for some folks.”
Zveare mentioned he reported the difficulty to CERT-In, India’s nationwide cyber emergency response company, in August 2025. The vulnerability was mounted inside weeks, although affirmation from the corporate took longer and was offered to the cyber authorities in late November, he mentioned.
Sujit Paul, chief govt of Zota Healthcare, didn’t reply to emails despatched by TechCrunch final month. The researcher mentioned there was no indication the flaw had been exploited earlier than it was patched.
