7 passport agents arrested for hacking RPO website

The Hyderabad police on Friday arrested seven accused agents, who hacked the Regional Passport Office (RPO) website (www.passport.gov.in) and blocked the slots under the tatkal online booking.

Details of the investigation

A huge rush of applications was seen since February this year and the applicants failed to get slots. On the other hand, Gorantla Lathadar Rao (36), a shop owner and holder of PG Diploma in Computer Applications, found bugs on the passport office website and accessed the National Information Centre (NIC) server.

Due to this, Rao had an easy access to the passport applications and he submitted them on the website with confirmed dates, before the actual official release of the dates.

Shaik Subhani (34), a travel agent from Narasaraopet in Guntur district, registered passports online under the Tatkal scheme and was given a commission of Rs. 100 per application.

Subhani further hired seven agents in the city and they gave him the passport applications. These applications were passed on to Rao who updated the passport applications, along with dates on the website.

First Human Is Infected With Computer Virus

Pacemakers, defibrillators, cochlear implants... and many other medical devices on the implant track, are at risk for hacking, just as the medical community and patients with implants feared. But it was reported today that an implant hacking actually took place, when a British scientist became the first human to be infected by a computervirus through his implant.

Mark Gasson, from the University of Reading's School of Systems Engineering in Britain, had a device implanted in his left hand. A modified RFID chip, similar to those used to tag pets, was implanted in his hand as an experiment by Gasson to test if he could wirelessly activate mobile phones and pass through security doors.

But Gasson's implanted chip was hacked and infected with a computer virus that not only duplicated his chip but added code to it before replicating itself into other connected devices.

While the damage to Gasson was not life threatening, the fact that it happened shows how vulnerable medical implants can be. "If someone can get online access to your implant, it could be serious," Gasson said. "It is possible that you could create a virus that completely corrupts the device to the point where it does not work any more."