Fighting cyber crime

Hyderabad: Sandeep Mudalkar is not a cop but he fights crime in the city, across the state and sometimes beyond it. He has even helped the BSF in Gujarat.

The 28-year-old Malkajgiri-resident is an ethical hacker and helps the city’s cyber cell department in solving cases related to email hacking, creation of fake Facebook accounts, cloning of credit/debit cards, identity theft, lottery scams and more.

He even gave up his Stanford University seat to work on these cases and has, so far, solved 43 of the 82 cases handed to him by the cops since his first involvement in 2006 while he was a second year student at Aurora’s Scientific Technological & Research Academy.

Sandeep begins, “My father M.K. Vishwanatham, a forest department official, interacted with a lot of cops. One day, he mentioned a case that the police wanted some help in. A jilted boyfriend had created a fake email account and had circulated inappropriate mails to his ex-girlfriend’s relatives. I hacked the account, retrieved the IP address and gave it to the cyber cops.”

“My job is only to hand over the IP address (in case of emails and online accounts), IMEI (for mobiles) and MAC address and serial number (for laptops) to the cops. It helps them to trace criminals,” explains Sandeep.

In 2011, Sandeep founded his own cyber security and IT intelligence firm, Prediqnous, with offices in the city, Warangal, Ahmedabad, Mumbai and even UK.

Besides working from his Tarnaka office, he also conducts seminars to help cops understand the nature and sensitivity of cyber cases. His team also goes to schools and colleges educating youngsters on secure internet usage.