Hacker who breached Telangna police apps in state tracked, held in Delhi

HYDERABAD: Almost a week after police discovered that Apps (applications) promoted by Telangana police were hacked, TG Cyber Security Bureau investigators on Sunday arrested the alleged hacker, a computer applications student, from Delhi.

The 20-year accused, Jatin Kumar, turned out to be a repeat offender, who had previously leaked Aadhaar data. Jatin Kumar, a resident of Greater Noida, was arrested after a team of policemen tracked him down.

"A case was registered following the detection of a data breach involving HawkEye, TSCOP and SMS services. Acting swiftly, TG-CSB investigators travelled to Delhi, where they identified and arrested the hacker, who claimed to have posted the compromised data on a public platform for a price,'' director-general of police Ravi Gupta said. "The hacker was willing to selling the data for $150. It was on platforms like BreachForum.st, the information was posted inviting people to buy it. He shared his Telegram IDs, through which interested buyers could contact him,'' police said.

Though Jatin took precautions to hide his identity, using different tools and other techniques, police tracked him down on Saturday. He is being brought to Hyderabad.

TG-CSB director Shikha Goel told TOI that prima facie they came to know that the accused is a BCA student. When asked if the data was bought by anyone, she replied: "The accused accepts payment in crypto currency. Hence, it takes time to gather relevant data to come to any conclusion. He is also tight-lipped and we need to probe further to know the details."

Last year, Jatin was arrested by the Dwaraka police in Delhi for allegedly leaking data of Aadhaar and a few other agencies. In that offence, he came out on bail and the Delhi police had already filed a chargesheet against him.

"No sensitive/financial data of any user has been compromised. The HawkEye mobile application only retains user information such as mobile numbers, addresses and email IDs as part of its data repository. Prima facie, it is suspected that because of a weak/compromised password, the intruder might have obtained access to certain segments of HawkEye data by generating a report. As far as TSCOP is concerned, this application has been solely utilized for in-house tasks, guaranteeing no collection of confidential/financial user data,'' police said.

Following the data breach of different applications of Telangana police, TG-SCB officials have started making vulnerability assessment to overcome shortcomings.