Another Police App, TSCOP, Hacked

Hyderabad: A week after Telangana police’s HawkEye app was hacked and user data posted online for sale, another police app, TSCOP, was infiltrated by hackers. As a result, police information is up for sale on forums online.

The TSCOP app was hacked by the same source that hacked HawkEye. The hacker, as with the HawkEye, is selling the app user data on online forums for $120.

The TSCOP app was launched in 2018, for the internal use of the Telangana police. The app’s primary function was to provide instant information to police officials to solve crimes.

The app also has an integrated facial-recognition system (FRS). Police officials can use FRS to identify criminals, unknown bodies at crime scenes or even missing children. The then DGP M. Mahender Reddy had said, “Images will be compared against Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) and other police databases.”

The hacker uploaded sample data on forums to sell the database.

Sample data of Offender option, police gun licence details and law enforcement details have been uploaded by the hacker.

For the Offender option, data of the district and the police station, the name of the offender and their aliases, offender’s age, mobile number, current address, date of arrest, latitude and longitude details of the arrest area are enlisted.

For the police gun licence details, the name of the police station, the unique identification number of the licence, licence holder’s name, date of birth, Aadhar number or voter ID, licence holder’s gender, permanent address, date of licence issue and date of licence expiry data were uploaded online.

For law enforcement details, the officer's mobile number, officer’s name, police station, officer’s designation and user image are now up for sale. Details of hundreds of police officers are listed on forums online by the hacker as “sample”.

The TSCOP app received the Best NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) award for the year 2017 under the “Empowering Police with Information Technology” category.

People who use the Telangana police services are alarmed at the data leaks and application hacks. Sravanthi, a Hawkeye app user, said, “I was shocked to see the data of Telangana police application users for sale.”

Despite the initial Hawkeye hack happening a week ago, the police action on the breach looks minimal. The original post by the hacker, intending to sell nearly 2.2 lakh users data, is still up on the forum and is still open for sales.

Many are criticising the way the Telangana police handled the user data, while the police department remains silent. No official information has been passed on by the department. When contacted by Deccan Chronicle about the app breaches and data leaks, the top-brass of the department did not respond.