New Delhi, Jan 5 (Agency) Six men, who were allegedly involved in hacking and manipulating the results of online examinations, including GMAT and JEE, were arrested from different states including Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon and Jaipur. The accused hired Russian hackers to get access to various exam portals, police said on Wednesday. They have been identified as A Dhunna (39), S Dhunna (28), H Shah (42), trio is native of Mumbai, K Goel (39) resident of Delhi, M Sharma (35) and R Teotia (33), both are from Haryana. The police said one of the accused Teotia has cash reward of Rs one lakh on his arrest from Haryana and also is on the wanted list of CBI.
The police said Teotia was apprehended from Jaipur. Teotia told police that he was engaged in online examination hacking and solving for the last past five years and he had been in touch with Russian hackers for getting the exams hacked. He visited Russia in 2018. During the lockdown, Russian hackers also stayed at his place. “The group has been instrumental in getting 18 candidates clear the GMAT exam and over 500 candidates in other exams over a period of about 3 years,” KPS Malhotra, DCP, Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO), Delhi Police. DCP said the police had received information that few syndicates were involved into unauthorized access of various competition exams and were charging hefty amount for getting the candidates the desired scores in the online examinations. These syndicates were advertising or claiming to have access into online examinations of GMAT, JEE, Cisco- Associate, Professional, Specialty, IBM-All Exams Competition – All exams EC Council-CEH, CHFI and CCISO. DCP said the information was developed and the alleged hackers were contacted through a decoy customer and a deal for cracking GMAT examination was struck with the syndicate members.
They assured that they would clear the examination in lieu of consideration amount. As a part of the deal, the examination was booked in the name of a decoy police official and examination fees was submitted and slot for examination was booked. Token money of the deal was also deposited in the bank account provided by the alleged persons. On the day of examination (December 26), the alleged hackers asked the decoy candidate to download a software “Ultraviewer” and thereby gained the remote access of the decoy candidate’s laptop. They also connected the candidate’s laptop to the solver, who had attempted the whole examination and evaded the detection from the proctor and other safety measures. The hacker got access to the laptop and disguised the remote access file as the system file. The decoy candidate, who was a police officer got a total score of 780 out of 800, which was 97 percentiles. DCP said the technical analysis of the telecom and financial data led to the identification of the syndicate members, which were found to be based in Mumbai. On January 1, raids were conducted in Mumbai and arrested three persons A Dhunna, S Dhunna and H Shah from Mahim.