An assistant manager working with the IT department of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) office at the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) lodged a police complaint on Friday, stating that some unknown person had gained unauthorised access to the official email IDs of at least 11 SEBI officials and sent out 34 emails to various people. The police are analysing the content of the emails, who the recipients were, and the purpose of these emails. They are also probing how the fraudster obtained access to the official email addresses of SEBI officials.
According to the BKC police, the complainant looks after cybersecurity work at SEBI. The complainant told the police that officials working at the SEBI use official email IDs only for SEBI-related work and the work at the SEBI office is confidential in nature. On May 24, a senior official from the integrated surveillance department of the SEBI informed the victim that some unknown person had unauthorisedly accessed and used his official email ID.
It was then learnt that on May 23, around 8.42pm, an email was sent from the official email account of the said SEBI official to unknown email addresses. The SEBI official informed that he had not sent those emails. In order to get more information about the said episode, the complainant had checked the disaster recovery site of the SEBI and found out that on May 23, between 8.42pm and 9.13pm, an unknown person had gained unauthorised access of the email credentials of at least 11 SEBI officials and sent out 34 emails to different email accounts, police said.
The SEBI has provided police with details of the emails that were sent and the police are analysing their content. A case on charges of cheating by personation, compensation for failure to protect data and identity theft has been registered.
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