Engineering dropout attempting to hack ICICI Bank website held
An engineering dropout from Kolkata was arrested here today for attempting to hack the website of ICICI Bank, police said today.
He intended to set up a clone server to facilitate transfer of funds from the bank and was allegedly being helped by a few IITians.
"We have nabbed a youth and recovered from him certain documents of ICICI Bank as also a laptop, pen drives, disks and a communication set. The bank officials have confirmed that there was an attempt to hack their website and server," City Crime Branch Cyber Cell head K L Patel said.
The youth was identified as Manish Pandey, son of a doctor from Kolkata and a fourth semester dropout of an Engineering college.
Large number of documents pertaining to the bank and its accountholders were recovered from his possession, pointing to his attempt to hack the bank's website, Patel said.
The youth had conducted a detailed 'vulnerability test' of the bank's website, checked traffic flow details, traced the bank's server at Bandra Kurla Complex (in Mumbai) and was attempting to set up a clone server to facilitate fund transfer, he said.
Pandey had come to Ahmedabad in search of a destination account holder, through whose account he could have effected fund transfers and he was planning to offer him a commission, Patel said.
"My target was to make fund transfer of Rs 10 crore from the bank so that I could have set up a IIT-JEE coaching institute in Varanasi," Pandey told reporters.
"I did all this with the help of a few IIT-Kanpur students," he claimed.
Whether Pandey was able to hack the bank's server or not is an issue of investigation. Further investigation would be done by the Forensic Science Laboratory from Gandhinagar, Patel said.
A case has been registered against Pandey under Section 65 and 66 of Information Technology(IT) Act, besides IPC 420.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson of ICICI Bank said the police informed the bank that a particular person had attempted to run a vulnerability scan on ICICI Bank web servers.
"ICICI Bank confirms that its web servers are robust and protected by state of the art firewalls and intrusion prevention systems, which ensured that no such attempts were successful. ICICI Bank is extending all cooperation to the police in their investigations," the spokesperson said.
