[moralfibre]

Originally Posted by sajo

Edited my Earlier post.
No no, I mean, even if I am a regular joe thief, I can saunter across a public parking lot, check out the chassis number of a few bikes and note their registration numbers, go home, get their home info and proceed to misuse it.

I agree with you and see my edit above. The ease of access of this information also adds risk to women riding two wheelers. It's easy for any bloke to walk upto her scooter and get all information required to get her home address.

[adg_andy]

Originally Posted by moralfibre

adg_andy, try el lobo's suggestion as below. Do ensure you put in the last 5 characters of your chassis number as well.

I tried using Chassis number- doesn't identify :(

[el lobo 6061]

Originally Posted by moralfibre

It is an unsecured database from what I see. You have as much access to two wheeler information as me.

EDIT: On the bright side, imagine you visit a used car dealer and you quietly note down the last 5 characters of the chassis number of the car along with the registration number. You could get in touch with the owner and get a fair idea on the vehicle mileage, condition and repair history, etc. I'm sure you could coax in to ask the selling price of the car to know how much the dealer is looting you.

Originally Posted by sajo

No no, I mean, even if I am a regular joe thief, I can saunter across a public parking lot, check out the chassis number of a few bikes and note their registration numbers, go home, get their home info and proceed to misuse it.

There's always two sides of coin.
It is a boon for a used car buyer as he can know the whole history of the car and be sure of what he is buying.
On the other side, a thief could easily note down the registration number and chassis number is mentioned on the bikes. Easily can know the address and other details needed.
VW cars have their chassis number mentioned below the front windscreen, so VW can be even more easier targets.
Cannot understand whether its a boon or bane?

@adg_andy
You need to provide both the vehicle registration number and the last 5 digits of the chassis number. Chassis number can be alpha numeric.

[MandarMax]

No doubt this will be useful for getting vehicle/owner history but considering the amateurish nature of the web site, I have huge privacy concerns.

If necessary protections are not built into the system then an attacker can easily download car/owner information in bulk by using an SQL injection attack. On the face of it looks like the developers have added some input validations but not sure how good they are.

Anyway, I checked my car / license information both are not present in the database yet (Registered in Pune, 2006).

[arpanjha]

working great for my car and motorcycle, but didnt work for my DL

[Rajeevraj]

Was able to see details of my current car.

Interesting observation: I tried with details of my earlier car which I sold to True Value. It gave 3 entries. One for each owner of the car. So it has an entry listing the car under my name and one for the previous owner and one for the new owner who bought it from Truevalue. Since I know the history of the car, I know who the current owner would be. But for someone else looking at it, there is no way to find who is the current owner.

I think this is due to the fact the the Regn is in book form and hence has the history and the data entry folks entered all the owners details(or the software has a bug and displays everything). My current car has the card format and hence only the current owner is listed.

[mmxylorider]

Tried the 135 (bought used) and since the current RC is the smart card, could find the entry. Wifey's 2003 scooty with the older RC is not found. Looks like vehicles which got smart cards during registration or resale vehicles which got upgraded to the smart RC are there in the system. Guess nobody is bothered with converting older records into electronic format.

The other thing I observed is the insurance information which is as per what was provided during registration. Mine is out of date for all vehicles. Insurance companies should start feeding their information into this system so that I get to see latest information.

[el lobo 6061]

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

I think this is due to the fact the the Regn is in book form and hence has the history and the data entry folks entered all the owners details(or the software has a bug and displays everything). My current car has the card format and hence only the current owner is listed.

There ain't any bug. The software(Vahan) is mean't to keep the data of all the owners of the vehicle to track the history of the vehicle.
Even in the card format, it keeps track of the all the previous owners. There is also mention of owner serial no(O.SL.NO.) which gives the number of owners of the vehicle whereas the chip has all the information.

Edit: Didn't wan't to double post.

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj2625350

Agree. But to get the full transaction history, there is a separate link. In any case my current car is also 2nd owner and the search showed only my name. But for the previous car, the initial search itself threw up 3 entries. So there is some inconsistency

There can be some inconsistency because of the huge database and the queries used to fetch the data. Vahan itself being a Govt website will be prone to bugs, inconsistencies and abnormalities. Most of the Govt website are so, if not maintained properly. What mostly concerns me is the security aspect of the database.

[Rajeevraj]

Originally Posted by el lobo 6061

There ain't any bug. The software(Vahan) is mean't to keep the data of all the owners of the vehicle to track the history of the vehicle.
Even in the card format, it keeps track of the all the previous owners. There is also mention of owner serial no(O.SL.NO.) which gives the number of owners of the vehicle whereas the chip has all the information.

Agree. But to get the full transaction history, there is a separate link. In any case my current car is also 2nd owner and the search showed only my name. But for the previous car, the initial search itself threw up 3 entries. So there is some inconsistency

[rohi_rao]

Originally Posted by el lobo 6061

There's always two sides of coin.
It is a boon for a used car buyer as he can know the whole history of the car and be sure of what he is buying.
On the other side, a thief could easily note down the registration number and chassis number is mentioned on the bikes. Easily can know the address and other details needed.
VW cars have their chassis number mentioned below the front windscreen, so VW can be even more easier targets.
Cannot understand whether its a boon or bane?

@adg_andy
You need to provide both the vehicle registration number and the last 5 digits of the chassis number. Chassis number can be alpha numeric.

An example of a boon: Guy in Zen kisses my parked Scorpio while reversing and my Scorpio goes all blaring. I go out and check and the guys thinks he has done some damage (later found that actually nothing had happened so did not pursue) and rushes off. I note down the regn number in any case. Sent sms to RTO (BTIS - Traffic fines on mobile), the reply has owner name, engine num and full chassis number. Then got the vehicle registration details from Vahan. If you want to go one step further and hoping against hope that the guy has a BSNL land line connection, you can search by name and address on Welcome to Bangalore Telecom District website directory services !

[gupta_chd]

Originally Posted by moralfibre

The website for Sarathi is still running on the default tomcat port and is one of the worst hosting practice.

Just out of curiosity, how did you come to know it is running on Tomcat ?

[moralfibre]

Originally Posted by gupta_chd

Just out of curiosity, how did you come to know it is running on Tomcat ?

Because of the logo on the URL:

[gandavadi]

Originally Posted by SAS

Welcome to the Indian bureaucracy. It should eventually show up, give it a couple months or so.

I'll check my 7 year old car shortly and post results. Thanks @moralfibre for the good thread

My week old car lists in Vahan!!

But, I am unable to access Sarathi

[ruchir911]

Tried searching for my own car in the database section. It worked, and showed the details accurately. Certificate warning popped up (and I don't expect them to update their SSL certificate any soon), but the site worked on Google chrome.

However, details regarding renewal of insurance is not updated. Neither is hypothication. I assume that this would be taken up as enhancements later.

[mxx]

Good start. Finally a national database is coming up.
Although the concept is good, the portal is amateurish - like all NIC portal. They have even screwed up the ssl setup, causing browsers to show untrusted site alert.