Aeronautical agency's TAN account hacked

A TAN (Tax Deduction and Collection Account Number) of a premier Indian Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) was compromised, and unauthorised online corrections were made to manipulate tax returns of a private aerospace engineering company in Bengaluru.

Rangarajan S (58), a senior official of ADA, has filed a complaint with the Cyber Crime wing of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) seeking legal action against unknown hackers on June 4. Based on Rangarajan’s complaint, the CID police have registered an FIR under various sections of the Information Technology Act, and are probing.

In his complaint to the police, Rangarajan stated: “On March 31, an amount of Re 1 has been remitted to ADA’s TAN number. Also, some unknown person has filed 27EQ return of 4th quarter FY 2018-19 offline on May 7 (possibly at TIN-FC centre). ADA’s TDS Reconciliation and Correction Enabling Systems user ID and login password have been accessed unauthorisedly on May 14.

The hackers have not only breached into the TAN login but also changed the user name, password, email ID and even a mobile number linked the certain account. They have even unauthorisedly updated the PAN number of the company belonging to one Aerospace Engineers Pvt Ltd. The police said the compromise could have happened between March and May this year, and came to light recently during verification of the official tax accounts.

Confirming the TAN login compromise, a senior official of the ADA said that though there was a breach in TAN account, there was no security concern.

“This is not a serious issue since the account was in an open domain. However, no confidential data pertaining to the agency has been compromised,” the officer added.