Hyderabad: The Cyber Security Bureau (TGCSB) police arrested a hacker involved in breaching the ‘Hawkeye’ mobile app. The accused has been identified as Jatin Kumar, a 20-year-old student from Greater Noida, sources told Deccan Chronicle.
The cyber cops, using advanced tools, identified the hacker who had posted details of the breach on databreachforum.st and offered to sell it for $150. The hacker, a resident of Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, provided the Telegram IDs ‘Adm1nfr1end’ and ‘Adm1nfr1ends’ for buyers to contact him regarding the Hawkeye and TSCOP data, respectively.
Police said Jatin had attempted to mask his identity but the cyber police utilised social engineering techniques to track him down in Delhi.
The CSB registered a case (9 of 2024) based on the data breach involving Hawkeye, with subsequent reports on the TSCOP and police SMS services apps, Director-General of Police Ravi Gupta said in a press release on Sunday. “Our teams arrested the accused in Delhi on Saturday and he will be brought to city Hyderabad on transit remand,” Gupta said.
The accused has a history of cybercrimes, having been previously involved in a similar case of hacking and was earlier arrested by a special cell of Dwarka police station in New Delhi (201 of 2023), the DGP said. The accused had confessed to the city cyber cops that he had leaked data regarding Aadhaar cards and critical information related to other agencies.
The probe is ongoing, with efforts to identify any additional accomplices involved in this case, Gupta said. The DGP said sensitive or financial data of any the user has been compromised in the backing.
The Hawkeye app only retains user information such as mobile numbers, addresses, and email IDs as part of its data repository, he said. Prima-facie, it was suspected that because of a weak or compromised password, the intruder might have obtained access to certain segments of Hawkeye data.
With regard to the TSCOP app, DGP Gupta said it was utilised for in-house tasks, guaranteeing no collection of confidential or financial user data. He said it does not collect any visitor or hotel management data. “Hence, it is absolutely incorrect to say that TSCOP pushed / gave such data to any third party,” Gupta clarified. “Therefore, certain related media reports that appeared in newspapers are denied.”
In the case of the SMS server URL of the Hyderabad city police, the intruder’s claims were false as the URL had been defunct and unsubscribed since April 2022, with Hyderabad city police to use it long before that, the DGP said.
“In addition to investigating the data breach incident, we have initiated comprehensive monitoring, vulnerability assessments and penetration testing across all police internal and external networks, web and mobile applications, as well as cloud and endpoints to identify and address any security weaknesses, so as to prevent any future breach,” the state police chief said.
The DGP congratulate senior police officials Bhaskaran, Viswajit Kampati, K.V.M. Prasad and their team for detecting this case in record time under the supervision of Shikha Goel, director of the Cyber Security Bureau.
