Software Engineer arrested for hacking payment gateway

Newly set up cyber cell of Maharashtra has made their first arrest on April 23, 2019. The accused is software engineer, aged 28, who had hacked payment gateway of one of the leading bourse for day-trading thus causing loss of around INR 42 lakh to the exchequer.

Last year, the state of Maharashtra had set up their state police for handing cybercrime. The state also appointed Brijesh Singh, the special inspector general of police, as head in order to curb the rising cybercrime incidents. Mr. Singh confirmed that they had arrested a person named Vignesh Kannan of Chennai, who had traded on one of the leading bourse for several months by hacking its payment gateway and then siphoned off several lakhs of rupees.

Singh said that "we managed to trace the accused who had been evading us for some time now. We have also successfully plugged loopholes in the payment gateway so that no such leakages occur in future".

The complaint was lodged by Parag Shah of ICCL (Indian Clearing Corporation) in February 2019, said the police. Shah in his complaint told the police that a customer named Kannan had purchased units worth INR 1 lakh of Reliance Mutual Fund via a broker, but the ICCL received only INR 10,000 in their account. Similarly, there was another example where Kannan bought mutual fund units of INR 50,000, but the ICCL received just INR 5,000 in their account.

During scrutiny of the transactions made by Kannan, ICCL found that the accused had been doing day trading for the last 3 years. At the time of conducting these transactions, Kannan hack into payment gateway and then deposit simply 10% of his purchase value.

By using this method, the accused got benefited by around INR 41.50 lakh in last three years. Once these irregularities were found, a complaint was lodged by ICCL with Maharashtra Cyber police - who then registered a FIR (First Information Report) and started an investigation.

Police said that once the accused find that police were looking for him, the cell phone was switched off by him and he absconded. The Maharashtra police cyber team camped for three weeks in Chennai and finally is successful in nabbing Kannan on April 23, 2019.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/14/2019