19-year old hacker of Odisha cooling heels in jail

Hyderabad, May 28: Himalaya Mohanty, a 19-year teenager pursuing ITI in a remote village in Balasore District of Odisha State, learnt hacking techniques by using his smart phone and posted links to cracked code of an EPABX of the toll-free number of “Lloyd Electricals and Engineering Ltd.” As such thousands of net surfers made free calls by using code resulting the Lloyd company received a hefty bill of about Rs 60 lakh. The facts of the case are that, in the month of November 2015, Cyber Crimes Police Station Cyberabad received a complaint from “Lloyd Electricals and Engineering Ltd” stating that someone has hacked the code of their Toll-free mobiles numbers EPABX and made thousands of calls through their toll-free calling facility because of that, they received a hefty bill of about Rs 60 lakh for the calls made routed through their EPABX. Normally, the bill will not cross Rs One Lakh per month even in the peak season, the complainant said. Based on the complaint, a case was registered and during the investigation, it was found that the hacker has created a website and posted the link of the cracked code of EPABX (Electronic Private Automatic Branch Exchange) of the toll-free number of Lloyd customer care centre. When the Cyber sleuths were backtracking the footprints of the hacker, they found that he used a proxy server and pretending to be logging from different IPs of various countries. But ultimately team led by Cyber Crimes Inspector Md. Riyazuddin traced the route location of hackers at a remote location of Balasore district of Odisha State. The inspector along with SI K. Vijay Vardhan reached the village Shibapura under the limits of Khantapada Police Station and apprehended hacker Himalaya Mohanty, who has just turned 19 years. During the interrogation, investigators were surprised to note that, he never travelled to any cities beyond his district capital and completed his schooling in his remote village and pursuing ITI course. The boy got old model ”3” display mobile phone. By using it, he has created a website and posting different hacking techniques. In spite of his poor English knowledge, he got himself registered in various forums/websites of hacking and participating in chatting by using translator software. He confessed that he leant the hacking techniques through various online forums and can hack Wi-Fi routers, emails, Facebook accounts and also mobiles. Most of the techniques are simple. He will post on various websites that he can share the hacking techniques and asked the enthusiastic to contact him by emails/SMS. When he receives a request, he sent a script of Trojan by which he will gain control of sender’s accounts. Though he did not gain monetarily, in this case, the toll-free number’s company suffered a loss of about Rs 60 lakh. The hacker added that he was doing these activates for the sake of fun which proved to be costly for him and presently cooling his heels in jail. The case is being investigated by Inspector Md. Riyazuddin under the supervision of S. Jayaram, ACP Cyber Crimes. The efforts made by Cyber Crimes Inspector Mohammad Riyazuddin and S.I K. Vijayvardhan in cracking the case and arresting the accused were appreciated by C.V. Anand IPS, Commissioner of Police.