In a strategic operation spread over ten days across Mumbai, Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan the special cell of the Delhi police has arrested six persons including hackers, solvers, trainers and coaching institute owners allegedly involved in hacking into and manipulating the results of reputed online examinations including the GMAT, JEE and so on. Investigation has revealed that the group has been instrumental in getting 18 candidates to clear the GMAT and around 500 candidates in other exams for about three years. Three of the six persons arrested are from Mumbai and have played a key role in the racket, police said.
Those arrested have been identified as A Dhunna, 39, a Mahim resident who runs a training firm engaged in offering training courses related to networking, his brother S Dhunna, 28, who is a BTech, H Shah, 42, a Kandivli resident who managed the payments for GMAT exam deals, K Goel, 39, a New Delhi resident who runs a training institute in networking courses, M Sharma, 35, Haryana resident and mechanical engineer who has been a GMAT prep tutor since 2015 and R Teotia, 33, also a Haryana resident. Sharma met Goel through Facebook and for quick money, agreed to attempt examinations through remote access in lieu of money, In 2017, Teotia set up a lab in partnership in Agra and started illegal activities such as online examination hacking.
Speaking about the operation, DCP Special Cell, KPS Malhotra said, information was received by police that there were some syndicates involved in unauthorised access of various competitive exams and were charging hefty amounts for getting candidates their desired scores in these reputed examinations online. These syndicates were advertising or claiming to have access to online examinations of GMAT, JEE, Cisco-Associate, Professional, Specialty, IBM-All Exams Comptia - All exams EC Council-CEH, CHFI and CCISO etc.
“The information was developed and the alleged persons (hackers) were contacted through a decoy and a deal for cracking the GMAT examination was struck with the syndicate members. They assured they would clear the examination in lieu of money. As a part of the deal, the examination was booked in the name of a decoy police officer and the examination fee was submitted and slot for examination was booked. Token money for the deal was also deposited in the bank account provided by the accused. On the day of the exam on December 26, the accused persons asked the decoy candidate to download software called ‘Ultraviewer’ and thereby gained remote access to the decoy candidate’s laptop. They also connected the candidate’s laptop to the solver, who had attempted the whole examination, evaded detection from the proctor and other security measures. The hacker got access to the laptop and disguised the remote access file as the system file. The decoy candidate got a total score of 780 out of 800, which is 97 percentile and can now get admission to top MBA colleges worldwide,” said Malhotra.
He added, “The technical analysis of the telecom and financial data led to the identification of the syndicate members, who were found to be based in Mumbai. On January 1, the Dhunna brothers and Shah were apprehended from Mahim. The mobile phones used for communicating and striking the deal with the decoy, the laptop used for managing the details of such aspirants and other incriminating evidence were recovered and seized. The same are being subjected to forensic examination. These three people were primarily involved in striking the deal with the decoy customer and then connecting the decoy customer with another module of syndicate, which gains access and solves the exam. Based on their interrogation, other suspects were apprehended. Teotia had revealed that he had been engaged in online examination hacking and solving for the past five years and he had been in touch with Russian hackers also, to hack the exams. He had visited Russia in 2018 and Russian hackers had also stayed at his place during the lockdown. Teotia was also wanted by the CBI and Haryana police.”
