Techie Held For Hacking Air India Frequent Flyers Accounts

July 18, 2016

New Delhi, Jul 18: A 23-year-old techie has been arrested for hacking Air India's Frequent Flyer member accounts and using them to book tickets sold to several travel agents, Delhi Police said on Sunday.

airindiaThe accused, Anitesh Giri Goswami, a BCA graduate from Pune, was arrested from Jaipur on Friday.

According to police, a complaint was received in the Cyber Crime Cell of the Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) alleging some persons were selling Air India tickets by redeeming of miles of genuine Flying Returns Members after hacking the Frequent Flyer members account.

In a statement, the EOW said it was found that the hub of the scam was in Rajasthan's Jodhpur and Anitesh was its mastermind. On basis of electronic surveillance and information of a local informer, a raid was conducted at an apartment in Jaipur and Anitesh was nabbed.

A laptop, several mobile phones and other relevant documents were also recovered from his possession.

Police further claimed that Anitesh was an IT expert, who had earlier worked with Kingfisher Airlines and Air India and was well versed with the online ticket-booking system and functioning of Air India's intranet and internet-based systems.

Explaining the modus operandi, police said that Anitesh first understood functioning of the ticketing system as well as the points/miles system of the airlines and then hacked into the Loyalty Plus programme website of Air India.

After gaining access, he administrator user rights, which he used to upgrade several other user IDs with the same rights, police said.

Using these IDs, he verified hundreds of dormant accounts of Frequent Flyer members by uploading fraudulently prepared KYC (know your customer) documents, and used these membership accounts and the miles or points accumulated in these accounts for booking airline tickets. These were sold to various travel or ticketing agents based in Pune, Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai.

He gained access to the internal functioning of Air India website while working at the Jodhpur airport, and left his Air India job to start exploiting loopholes in the Frequent Flyer Programme's functioning.

Comments

Suresh
 - 
Monday, 18 Jul 2016

May be brother of arnab!!

Ahmed Ali K
 - 
Monday, 18 Jul 2016

Both Go-Swamis are jokers and talk of the town now a days

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News Network
April 16,2020

Bengaluru, Apr 16: The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday has identified eight districts from Karnataka as COVID-19 hotspots.

Districts that have reported a higher number of cases are classified as hotspots, the districts where cases have been reported as non-hotspots, and green zones where no cases have been reported.

Bangalore Urban, Mysuru, Belagavi, Dakshina Kannada, Bidar, Kalaburgi, Bagalokote and Dharwad have been identified as Covid-19 hotspots by Union Health Ministry, tweeted the state health department on Wednesday.

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News Network
May 25,2020

Bengaluru, May 25: The 36-hour marathon lockdown call given by Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, passed off peacefully with people opting to remain inside their houses and cooperate with the state government to fight against spread of deadly Covid-19.

Though the call was only for 24 hours from 7 am (Sunday) to 7 am (Monday) another 12 hours was added to it as the night curfew was already in force from 7 pm on Saturday and the next day (Sunday) it continued till Monday up to 7 am.

Autorickshaws and bus service were off the road giving a tough time to people arriving from neighbouring places reach home that too during the night. Adding to their woes was heavy rain that lashed the city for more than two hours on Sunday evening flooding the streets.

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News Network
June 10,2020

Bengaluru, Jun 10: Internet connectivity, provided under the central government's BharatNet initiative, will be improved in rural areas of Karnataka in the next two to three months, said Deputy Chief Minister CN Ashwath Narayan.

After video conferencing with heads of different agencies and officials, on improving the quality of internet in rural areas, Ashwath Narayan said, "I reviewed the progress of the BharatNet implementation and the steps to be taken to improve the quality of internet connectivity in the next two to three months."

"We also discussed the possibility of giving the implementation of BharatNet to a different agency. We will seek permission from the central government and continue the project. We will ease communication with rural people by ensuring quality and high-speed internet to all Gram Panchayats," he added.

When BSNL officials and other agency representatives who attended the video conference shared their problems, the Deputy Chief Minister assured to solve them through proper coordination.

"Through BharatNet, several government schemes are being implemented in rural areas. Civic service centres are issuing birth and death certificates, Aadhaar cards and social security pensions among others. Of the total 6,000 Gram Panchayats in the state, 4,000 have high-speed internet connectivity, and the remaining will be provided with better internet connectivity through a new agency,'' said Ashwath Narayan.

Additional Secretary (e-governance) Rajeev Chawla, Additional Chief Secretary (IT-BT) EV Ramana Reddy, Principal Secretary (RDPR) Uma Mahadevan, Director (IT) Meena Nagaraj, Collegiate Education Director Pradeep and other senior officials were present in the meeting.

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