Indian Police hunting hackers
By Mukund Dubey

Unknown hackers have gained unauthorized entry into the official website of the IT solution provider company KLG Systel Limited and have deleted vital information including login and application modules. The company with a pan-India presence and head office in Gurgaon has reported the matter to the police officials who have registered a case of cyber crime against the hackers.  The police Cyber Crime Cell have sought the help of experts from the IT industry including NASSCOM.

KLG Systel has more than 2000 clients which include such blue chip companies like Bharat Petroleum, Indian Oil, ONGC, Tatas, Reliance Petroleum among others.  The turnover is approx Rs. 1200 million.

The case was registered under section 65 and 66 of the Information Technology Act 2000 of India. The company secretary of KLG Systel Limited,  Vinay Kumar,  stated in his complaint to the police that the company’s official website which was hosted on VSNL had been hacked. He complained that the unknown ‘intruders’ had gained unauthorized access into the database of the company website.

Vinay Kumar stated in his complaint that the hackers continued to hack the company website throughout the month of October as the company engineers spotted unauthorized entry by some intruder on three occasions during internal security checks in October. The company suffered huge losses as their clientele were not able to analyze the available information on the website. 

The hacking incident was first detected on October 3 and it was found out that someone had deleted the login module of the website, and their customers were not able to analyze the critical information posted on it. Kumar further stated in his complaint that on October 8, during a routine security check, another attempt of hacking was detected and it was found that the application modules had been deleted and also altered this time. On October 15 once again, the company found that the unknown hacker had deleted a major chunk of database from the website. Vinay Kumar in his statement suspected that someone had managed to gain entry to the Data Centre of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) line which hosts the company website.

The station head officer (SHO) of Sadar police station said that a case of cyber crime had been registered under section 65 and 66 of IT Act 2000 of India against unknown hacker and matter was handed over to the cyber crime cell. "The case was registered after the company officials produced records related to the hacking of their company' website. An officer of ACP level would be conducting investigation into the case," the SHO said.

(Section 65 of IT Act 2000: Applicable when tampering with computer source documents such as computer source code. The section provisions for punishment with imprisonment up to three years, or with a fine which may extend up to two lakh rupees, or with both. Section 66 of IT Act 2000:  Applicable when hacking of computer system with the intention of destroying or deleting or altering any information in it. This section provisions for imprisonment up to three years, or with fine which may extend up to two lakh rupees, or with both.)