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CRIME: HACKERS
Access Denied
Mumbai Police catch two hackers and boast the Internet
is no longer a safe haven for criminals
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NET TROUBLE: The cyber criminals
in police custody; Khare's website (below)
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The arrest of two
hackers in Mumbai has busted the myth of an labyrinthine Internet and
taught some lessons in cyber policing. It was a frantic cyber cat-and-mouse
thriller that's staple to Hollywood thrillers like Swordfish-clever hackers,
clueless cops and finally cyber comeuppance-except this one was played
out real time last month.
It all began on July 3 when cybercellmumbaicity.com-the
website of the Mumbai Police's cyber crime investigation cell-was hacked
into. The hackers signed off as Dr Neukar and Da Libran and scrawled abusive
cyber graffiti on the website. The police undid the damage in about an
hour. Three days later, the hackers struck again. Their pre-dawn strike
left the police website paralysed for over 12 hours. Cocking another snook
at the police, the hacker contacted a city tabloid, posed for pictures
and gave interviews. "The police can't protect their own website,
how will they protect those of others?" he scoffed.
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Khare
and Mhatre broke into the police website and scrawled graffiti on
it.
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It became, in the words of Joint Commissioner
Bhujangrao Mohite, a prestige issue for his department. Three computer
geeks, part of the Mumbai Police's advisory committee, were called in:
Internet evangelist Vijay Mukhi and young ethical hackers Flynn Remedios
and Vikram Rangnekar. The cyber gumshoes observed that several attempts
had been made to enter the police's site from two particular Internet
Protocol (IP) addresses in July. Both belonged to cyber cafes in Dadar.
A week after the cyber attack, police arrested the cyber cafe owner and
manager. The second IP address was traced to the Nexus cyber cafe nearby,
run by 23-year-old Mahesh Mhatre. The police arrested him as well.
Meanwhile, following Dr Neukar's digital tracks
left behind on computers in the Nexus cybercafe, Rangnekar homed in on
one computer. Crime branch officers interrogated the cyber café
staff and nearby restaurants and came up with the rough sketch of a youth
who lived in the neighbourhood and surfed till early mornings. The net
was closing. The next morning, police arrested Anand Ashok Khare, a 23-year-old
engineering college dropout, from his house in a three-storeyed chawl
near the densely-congested Dadar railway station. The stockily built six-footer
broke down and admitted to being Dr Neukar. Mhatre had been his accomplice,
Da Libran.
Khare's website, maharaja.webjump.com, hosts
his own passport-sized photograph and promises to teach surfers to hack.
"We hack, we teach, we make history, we are the analyzers,"
it intones.
The "analyzers" were trapped thanks
to what Mukhi calls a perfectly synergised "brick and click"
operation. "With these arrests we have finally busted the myth of
an anonymous Internet. You can run, but you cannot hide," says DCP
Manoj Lohiya, head of the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police.
Looks like the web police has finally arrived.
—Sandeep Unnithan
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METRO TODAY
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