Karnataka Cyber Crime Police Arrests Bank Account Hacker

India police's cyber crime wing detained a man for allegedly hacking into the online bank accounts of a number of customers after committing a theft of their sensitive data from PCs they worked at in different cyber cafes, and then stealing hundreds of thousands of rupees from those accounts.

Ajai Kumar Singh, Director General of Police (Corps of Detectives) in Karnataka told the media that 27-year-old Joseph, proficient in computer science, had intruded into the Internet bank accounts of 17 customers to siphon off huge amounts of money and transfer them to his accomplices' accounts. KhaleejTimes reported on December 16, 2007.

The Karnataka police discovered that Joseph's e-mail accounts contained information about 100 customers' bank account passwords, account numbers and many other details. Banks like Citibank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank confirmed that about 70 active accounts along with their passwords found in Joseph's e-mail were authentic.

The incident came into notice when Senior Manager of an IT firm, Carl Braganza, reported to the police's cyber crime unit in October that there had been an illegitimate access to his account with Citibank and theft of Rs.127,000 through three separate transactions for recharge of cell phone. The Hindu reported, December 15, 2007.

Police were able to trace the terminal's IP address from where the online transactions were conducted and which led them to a Mahadevapura cyber café. Joseph was arrested when he confessed his crime and provided details of his accomplices.

The Karnataka police found that the cyber gang maneuvered its activities from five different cyber cafes at Old Madras Road in Bangalore, Gokulam in Mysore, and Mahadevapura, HAL 3rd Stage, Kalyananagar. The gang carried out its operations during the first week of November 2007 when people visited cyber cafes to examine their pay accounts and make financial transactions over the net.

Joseph used a keylogger program to capture the account holders' data that helped him to withdraw Rs.15,000 from a UTI bank account, Rs.87,000 from an HDFC Bank account, Rs.50,000 from another HDFC Bank account and Rs.75,000 from a Citibink account in August 2006 and August 2007, police said.

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