MUMBAI: Akshay Raval, 20, is burning the midnight oil while his hostel roommates are fast asleep at 2 am. A computer engineering student from Gujarat, now in Pune, Raval is in touch with various such students from across the country.
However, on the virtual world he becomes prime_hacky089 when he logs into hackers' communities and shares information such as latest codes, websites for safe payment and tricks that can disrupt a website's function. Ahmedabad: It is the perpetual hunt for a high and this time it is making money on the sly in the world of cyber crime.
Youths with amateur knowledge of the computer world are increasingly being mesmerised by the word ‘hacker’. It places them in a league apart from the 9-to-5 techies who get fat pay-packets for encoding programs for multinationals. Much like the league of Ajay and the three other youths who were arrested by the city crime branch for cyber crime.
Talking to Ajay has revealed that these youngsters lead an abnormal life - they sleep during the day, chat with the world at night and ofcourse, make money!
And, making easy money is their passion. A habit that has helped them change their social life, made them happening and cool and armed with the right gadgets.
Sunny Vaghela, an ethical hacker from Ahmedabad told TOI that when he pursued his dream, he also faced an ethical dilemma as the line between legal and illegal is very thin. “At times, you are at the other side of law but you know that you are doing it for good,” he says.
Vaghela says that there are hundreds of cyber communities that one can find with various keywords. “There are many famous cases in the USA where major multinational companies’ sites were hacked into, including a major on-line shopping site. As the servers of these hackers were outside the country, they could not be arrested,” he said.
The communities which are operated from central Asia have a database of thousands of financial services subscribers — credit cards, on-line payment gateways and fund transfers. Most of the time the victims are people who do not take adequate precautions while transacting on-line.
“I came across various websites where one can access huge database of private institutions. Students from cities such as Ahmedabad, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai join for fun and the high of doing something different.
However, most of the times the bigger hackers do not pass on everything to the greenhorns. Thus, they get restricted to some funny internet tricks and changing password and social networking hacking. But when it gets serious, it can cause economic and social problems,” says Vaghela.
Crime branch officials investigating the on-line shopping case told TOI that Shahid Khan, the youth from Ahmedabad came in contact with Ajay from Mumbai through a common friend and started exchanging information about hacking communities as they were interested in the common subject of hacking. Khan is a computer expert whose computer contained a number of “objectionable” links to finance gateways.
Indian teenagers charged with hacking - Phishers have absconded
By Jayant Mishra @ 16 June 2008 09:22 :: :: 0 Comments :: Category - Unusual
The Indian police have detained four teenagers in custody for making illegal online purchases. Three boys involved in the alleged conspiracy are from Ahmedabad , and a 16 years old minor with the pseudonym "Varun", alleged to be the mastermind behind Ebay hacking is from Mumbai.
The matter came to light when the site’s Mumbai office received complaints about heavy online buying being made from Ahmedabad. On June 11, Krishna Mohan, an Ebay India official, visited the Cyber Cell of Ahmedabad and lodged a complaint. After probing and investigating the matter, the Cyber Cell nabbed Varun from Mumbai, Shahid Khan, Wahid Khan and Hardi, the trio from Ahmedabad for running an illegal online purchase modus operandi. The police have recovered a database of 15,000 credit card numbers along with CCV details from Hardi’s laptop.
Sunny Vaghela, the ethical hacker who helped the crime branch in outsmarting the teenage hacker spoke to the IT Examiner. Sunny said: “the mastermind in the modus operandi was 16 years old, Varun. He had data base of US citizens and their credit card number along with CCV details, which he would pass on to Hardi sitting in Ahmedabad. Hardi would make fake IDs to make online purchases on Ebay and the products were delivered to Shahid and Wahid’s address”.
Hardi had convinced Shahid and Wahid, saying they were phishing on US clients and so there was no chance they would get traced. That’s why Shahid and Wahid fearlessly accepted on receiving the products at their address, said Sunny.
How did they get the Credit card number of US citizens?
Varun’s proficiency in hacking high-security and government websites let him into a hacking community, which gave him access to a huge database of credit card Customer Verification Value (CVV) numbers of prominent banks across the globe. A hacker, aged 19 years, operating form Chennai. is alleged to be the provider of the data base to Varun. He had spread Trojans across online purchase websites, which enabled him to get a track of all the data, which customers would type in. The involvement of another hacker from Hyderabad is also confirmed. But these two hackers have absconded.
Background: Of the master mind.
Varun is 16 and studies in Class X at St Ann's school, Mulund, Mumbai. His tools include a laptop, a communicator and a cellphone. He got in touch with fraudsters during gaming and worked 15 hours a day, trying to figure out how hacking worked. His illegal passion, took over him fast and he mastered in fooling the cyber police by using proxy servers for illegal transactions. He has contacts with US and Vietnam hackers, whom he calls his mentors. He bought goods worth Rs 90,000 in two months from Ebay India.
Apart from illegal online buys, Sunny said, this young group was also a part timeauction business. Itune is available only in selected countries, but the team would forge Itune certificates, take the encryption code and sell it to customers residing in countries, like Germany and Sweden where Itunes is unavailable. This business earned them around Rs90,000-100,000 thousand.
In this case, which appears to be a replica of a Hollywood film, all the perpetrators are aged under 20.
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