The police arrested 31-year-old MSc graduate from IIT-Kharagpur on Tuesday for allegedly hacking and illegally accessing the server of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).
The Bengaluru police arrested 31-year-old MSc graduate from IIT-Kharagpur on Tuesday for allegedly hacking and illegally accessing the server of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).
Abhinav Srivastav, hails from Kanpur and is based in Bengaluru is suspected to have stolen the Aadhar data. The demographic data which includes details like the address, mobile phone number, email address, age and sex - of at least 40,000 Aadhaar cardholders by hacking into the UIDAI database.
Srivastav was taken in the police custody on Wednesday for 10 days. According to the police, Abhinav accessed the data through a hospital’s e-application hosted by the government's National Informatics Centre (NIC). “He has not accessed any biometrics data like fingerprints and iris scan," officials added.
"Srivastav had developed an e-KYC verification mobile application and hosted the same on (Google) Play Store. Anyone clicking on this app would enter the e-hospital service, which is a central government scheme with Aadhaar-related details in it," they said.
Srivastav, currently was employed as a software development engineer with cab aggregator Ola.
The post-graduate from IIT-Kharagpur had developed a mobile application for Aadhaar e-KYC verification and hosted it on Google play store. To support the mobile app, Aadhaar related information, housed by the NIC server, was illegally accessed, the police said.
The UIDAI data was accessed through the 'e-Hospital' application and its server, they said.
Srivastava was the co-founder of mobile payments firm Qarth Technologies Pvt Ltd, which was acquired by cab aggregator Ola in 2016. He was currently employed with Ola as a software development engineer.
Accusing Srivastava of committing a "very serious" crime by exposing the private information of citizens, police said the city crime branch along with cyber crime sleuths arrested him.
The police said a CPU, four laptops, a tablet, four mobile phones, six pen drives and other materials worth Rs 2.25 lakh were seized from him and further investigation was on.
With inputs from PTI
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