Naavi has been warning the immature technology experts that there is a tendency with some to get intoxicated with the technology power they appear to have.
Some of them use their knowledge and skill to be security specialists and ensure that IT is safe for the community. They are the Information Security specialists and “Ethical Hackers” who know their boundaries and live within it.
Some become “Black hat hackers” and exploit the society. Thy make money, support the deep web and Bitcoin and essentially serve their selfish interest cheating others.
There is a third category of people who are not criminals by their inherent intention but donot know the limits under which they need to live. They become “hactivists” and try to challenge the authority for causes that they think is good but may not be really so.
These persons may be often dragged into indiscretion because of their ego and a desire to show off their capability without minding the consequence. Their intentions may be not bad but the path they chose is to challenge the law of the land in a manner which can land them in trouble and kill their career. They live on the mercy of the Police and reluctance of the law enforcement to waste their resources on a maverick software professional.
Many of the adolescents who do wheeling on the city roads belong to this category. These technology intoxicated script writers/hactivists are similar. They need to be disciplined by appropriate action by the Police.
One such professional was reported by Naavi.org long time back regarding the IRCTC hacking. That software professional was then working in Satyam Computers, Hyderabad and developed a script that could enable anybody to cheat the IRCTC Tatkal booking system. He gave the script free on his blog. When I pointed out the possibility of his action being considered as a crime, and with a little nudge from a member of the press, he removed the script and went silent. He must have escaped a possible danger to his career by realizing his mistake in time and correcting it. Several years later this software re-surfaced in the hands of the Jamtara type criminals and IRCTC took up the complaint and got many agents and the software distributor arrested and punished.
It appears that one more such person has now surfaced in Bengaluru according to this report in buzzfeednews.com
The article names the person as “Jay” a software engineer in Bangalore and the story is credited to a reporter by name Pranav Dixit identified with the email ID pranav.dixit @buzzfeed.com. It is obvious that “Jay” is not the real name of the software professional who is hiding his identity like a criminal who is afraid of the law.
Jay has admitted that he has hacked into the app and made it always show “Green”. He is thereby admitting that he is cheating his employer who has made it mandatory to allow Jay to get back to work and will perhaps cheat the law enforcement also and become a “Rogue Covid Spreading Virus in the society”. I am sure some of his friends would have already borrowed the hack and turned their phones also into green. This clan of a new generation of Tablighis will start spreading Covid in their enthusiasm to show off their technology power.
This newsbuzz reporter Mr Pranav Dixit is now the contact who is aware of the identity of this law breaker and may be many more similar persons and I request the police in Bengaluru to investigate and locate this hacker and bring him to book.
Naavi
Reference Articles
As some of the reader’s have pointed out, it is not clear if the hacker hacked his own phone to tweak the functioning of the app or he hacked the app itself.