BENGALURU: Latest police investigation revealed G Srikrishna alias Sriki, 24, the alleged international hacker from Bengaluru, had hacked into the office computers of Udupi Power Corporation Ltd owned by Adani Power, an Indian multinational conglomerate headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, last year.
Also, Srikrishna had demanded bitcoins to undo the damage caused.
Srikirshna’s hand in the hacking came to light recently when sleuths from Criminal Investigation Department interrogated him on the issue. On January 29, Girish Navada, associate general manager, UPCL, with its office in Seshadripuram, filed a complaint with cybercrime wing of CID.
“We are a private limited company dealing with transmission and supply of electricity. The company has installed a number of computers with various software for their usage. In addition, there are various computer security software installed for the purpose of protection of the computers. During the month of March-April 2020, it was discovered by the IT cell that the company’s software was attacked with ransomware by some unknown person or persons. Due to this attack, two computers were encrypted. The attacker had also sent a text message demanding bitcoins be sent to a wallet and trying to extort money from us. There was no corporate or critical information that was stolen. Although due to the said ransomware attack on the company’s computer system, some enduser information stored in the systems were damaged,” Navada said in his complaint.
Navada said they were able to recover the information and at that time the matter was addressed by the IT team and wasn’t reported to any investigating agency due to the lockdown.
Investigating officers said Sriki was about to target almost 14,000 computers of the company. “During investigation, we found that he had stolen information from 14 systems. He had demanded 300 bitcoins to undo the hacking,” an investigating officer said.