Zomato among sites targeted by Sriki: Charge sheet

Hacker Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki, who is at the centre of the spiralling Bitcoin scandal, had his eyes set on online payment portals and even Zomato, the online food delivery giant, according to documents accessed by DH.

One of the hard disks seized from Sriki and his friend Robin Khandelwal analysed by a cyber forensics firm contained the hacking data related to 16 websites, including Zomato. The other websites include payment platforms such as www.cashfree.com and www.payumoney.com, poker sites such as pppoker.club, www.callingstation.in and cryptocurrency exchange fcce.jp.

Sriki's attempts to hack into these websites were revealed during the investigation of a complaint by Pacific Gaming Pvt Ltd on the alleged hacking of Casino143 and Pokersaint websites.

Also Read | Karnataka Bitcoin scam: Charge sheet reveals indiscriminate hacking by 'Sriki'

During the course of the investigation, six hard disks were analysed by Group Cyber ID Technology Pvt Ltd. Details of the 16 hacked websites were found in one of the hard disks, according to the charge sheet filed by the police earlier this year.

It can be noted that this was the only hard disk of the six hard disks seized by the police that the firm analysed for the police. The cyber forensic firm noted its inability to secure data from the other five disks as their encryption "could not be bypassed with the available forensic software" among other reasons.

Zomato reportedly had a major security breach in May 2017 when around 17 million user records were stolen. According to a release from the firm then, the stolen information had "user email addresses and hashed passwords" but not "payment-related information" as it was stored separately.

Zomato had attributed this to "an internal security breach - some employee's development account was compromised."

DH reached out to Zomato's communications team, which did not respond to questions at the time of writing this.

Watch the latest DH Videos here: