CBI busts global child porn racket; 20-yr-old arrested from UP

Agencies
February 22, 2018

New Delhi, Feb 22: The CBI today claimed to have busted an international child abuse pornography racket operating on a WhatsApp group and arrested its alleged administrator -- an unemployed youth from Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh.

After registering a case of alleged violation of Information Technology Act, the CBI carried out searches at five locations in Delhi, Mumbai and Noida and Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh, officials said.

Nikhil Verma, son of a small worker in a jeweller, who is pursuing his graduation in commerce and is currently unemployed was arrested.

During the investigation, the agency has been able to find that there are 119 members of the group "KidsXXX" who were getting these disturbing pictures and videos to satiate their perverted lust, they said.

The members of the group spread globally including the US, China, New Zealand, Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Brazil, Kenya, Nigeria and Sri Lanka among others, the officials said.

During the searches, the CBI recovered mobile phones, laptops, and hard discs and other digital devices, they said.

Verma was booked along with four others accomplices: Nafees Reza and Zahid of Delhi, Satyendra Om Prakash Chauhan of Mumbai and Adarsh of Noida.

The agency which acted on its own intelligence toiled for nearly three months, without using any WhatsApp surveillance, to track down the accused merely on the basis of fieldwork of obtaining corroborating evidence, the officials said.

According to them, it was a classic police investigation where sleuths travelled to localities from where IP addresses of the computers and mobile phones used to upload and circulate child pornography videos, a heinous offence under the law.

A thorough background check, behavioural analysis, was done by the agency based on local inputs of the suspects before proceeding to act against them, they said.

The officials said accessing, producing, recording, uploading or circulating child abuse videos or pictures are serious offences under Information Technology Act and attract a punishment up to seven years and a fine of Rs 10 lakh.

The agency is carrying on with its investigation to locate other members and the group present in India and abroad, they said.

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Agencies
July 18,2020

Days after Twitter accounts of several billionaires were hacked to engineer a crypto scam, Twitter on Saturday said it is embarrassed, disappointed and, more than anything, sorry for what happened with some of its high-profile users as attackers successfully manipulated its employees and used their credentials to access internal systems, including getting through the two-factor protections.

In the first detailed summary of the "social engineering attack" via a crypto scam that hit at least 130 users this week, Twitter said for 45 of those accounts, the attackers were able to initiate a password reset, login to the account and send Tweets.

"We are continuing our forensic review of all of the accounts to confirm all actions that may have been taken. In addition, we believe they may have attempted to sell some of the usernames," the micro-blogging platform said in a statement.

For up to eight of the Twitter accounts involved, the attackers took the additional step of downloading the account's information via "Your Twitter Data" tool.

This is a tool that is meant to provide an account owner with a summary of their Twitter account details and activity.

"We are reaching out directly to any account owner where we know this to be true. None of the eight were verified accounts," said Twitter.

The company said the attackers were not able to view previous account passwords, as those are not stored in plain text or available through the tools used in the attack.

"Attackers were able to view personal information including email addresses and phone numbers, which are displayed to some users of our internal support tools," informed Twitter.

In cases where an account was taken over by the attacker, they may have been able to view additional information, Twitter added, saying its forensic investigation of these activities was still ongoing.

"We are actively working on communicating directly with the account-holders that were impacted".

The company said it will soon restore access for all account owners who may still be locked out as a result of the remediation efforts.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the Twitter crypto scam can be traced back to a group of hackers who congregate online at OGusers.com, a username-swapping community where people buy and sell coveted online handles.

The report said that the Twitter hack is not from Russian, Chinese or North Korean hackers but was done by a group of young people, "one of whom says he lives at home with his mother".

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Agencies
February 26,2020

New Delhi, Feb 26: The death toll in northeast Delhi communal violence over the amended citizenship law rose to 20 on Wednesday, according to GTB Hospital authorities.

On Tuesday, the death toll was 13.

"The death toll has risen to 20 today," Medical Superintendent of GTB Hospital, Sunil Kumar, told PTI.

Earlier, at least four bodies were brought to the Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital from the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, a senior official said.

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News Network
February 14,2020

Feb 14: R K Pachauri, a former chief of The Energy and Resources Institute, passed away on Thursday after a prolonged cardiac ailment, TERI Director General Ajay Mathur said.

He was 79.

"It is with immense sadness that we announce the passing away of R K Pachauri, the founder Director of TERI. The entire TERI family stands with the family of Dr Pachauri in this hour of grief," Mathur said in a statement issued by the TERI.

"TERI is what it is because of Dr Pachauri's untiring perseverance. He played a pivotal role in growing this institution, and making it a premier global organisation in the sustainability space," said Mathur, who succeeded Pachauri at TERI in 2015. Pachauri was admitted to Escorts Heart Institute in the national capital where he underwent open heart surgery and was put on life support on Tuesday, sources said.

In the statement issued by TERI, its Chairman Nitin Desai hailed Pachauri's contribution to global sustainable development as "unparalleled".

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