B'luru Police smitten by IIT grad Abhinav's tech skills

It is not uncommon for the police to be smitten by criminals for their skills. Bengaluru City Police, who are investigating the Aadhaar data leak through an app developed by IIT graduate Abhinav Srivastav, are so fascinated by the latter’s tech skills that they wish they could hire him as a cyber expert.

If all goes well, Srivastav may end up with a consultant job in the police department. The 31-year-old IITian accused of unauthorisedly accessing Aadhaar information, might soon be helping the city police in cracking Cybercrime cases. Senior cybercrime police officials are smitten by the expertise the techie possesses and are looking forward to taking his help in cracking unsolved cybercrimes.

“He can access Mac like mad. He is highly knowledgeable and excellent. We are unable to keep pace with his swiftness in cracking and breaking into web portals,” a senior cybercrime police officer privy to the investigation told DH.

During investigation, he had expressed his desire to help the police with cybercrime cases that have piled up at police stations. Cybercrime police sources said that Srivastav can be recruited into Cyber police department with a salary of at least Rs 20 lakh a year taking into account his expertise.

Even as he was drawing an annual salary of Rs 42 lakh from a cab aggregator who employed him as its app developer, he had signed a contract for another Rs 35 lakh to just add updated features to the app for a year, the officer said. Whether the police department can afford to have him on board is the moot point as he is overqualified and over-priced, he added.

Abhinav had accessed the UIDAI data through an insecure e-Hospital portal which had obtained licence from UIDAI for authentication access.

“As we speak, the e-Hospital portal is still unsecured with the URL saying http:// without an ‘s’. If secure, the URL would read https://,’’ he said.

He also said that the e-Hospital cannot be held culpable for negligence as they had obtained due licence from UIDAI for authentication access. As the e-Hospital’s website itself is insecure, Abhinav’s app piggybacked on it and accessed UIDAI data, the officer added.

If we have to go behind the e-Hospital, then we have to go after several websites, including governmental portals like Karnataka state police’s own - http://ksp.gov.in/, which is also insecure, another officer said. Government has to renew licence by paying money and get its websites secured, he added.Investigation so far revealed Srivastav will be charge-sheeted for not obtaining licence from UIDAI.