Police want to hire the hacker they arrested for data theft

Police have been left so impressed by the hacking skills of a guy they arrested for data theft that they now want to hire him.

Just a few days ago, Bangalore police arrested a guy named Abhinav Srivastava who was considered a prime suspect in the Aadhaar data theft. Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identity number issued to all Indian residents. Abhinav, who is a computer and cyber security expert, developed an app called Aadhar KYC and hosted it on Google Play. Using it, sensitive Aadhar data could be accessed illegally. The police arrested him on charges of exposing confidential information to the public.

However, while investigating Abhinav the police were left shocked by his expertise in hacking and cyber security. He gave the police a six-hour long demonstration, explaining how he was able to hack the Aadhaar data. His job was also made easy by the fact that the e-hospital website from which he stole data did not support Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). As a result, all the communication between the browser and the website was not encrypted, making the data theft a piece of cake for Abhinav.

Prior to getting arrested Abhinav was working at an Indian company called Ola where he was earning INR 42 lakh per year. So if the Bangalore police want to acquire his services either as a full-time employee or a consultant, they’ll have to cough up a huge amount of money!

Source – Times of India