4 held for tampering with MTNL’S server

INVESTIGATORS SUSPECT THAT THE ACCUSED TAMPERED WITH MTNL’S SERVER SYSTEM TO DAMAGE THE REPUTATION OF ITS RIVAL COMPANY

MUMBAI: The Mumbai Cyber police have arrested four senior executives of a private firm on Monday for allegedly causing the service provisional application of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) to crash, resulting in a loss to the service provider. The four belong to the same company that had previously provided service to MTNL.

Investigators suspect that the accused tampered with MTNL’S server system in order to damage the reputation of its rival company, which is presently providing service to MTNL. This was done so that the accused company could receive MTNL’S next contract.

The four arrested have been identified as Ramprasad Budhuguru, Prasanna Salimath, Gogineni V and Balushivaji Bamne. Salimath and Budhuguru were arrested from Bangalore and a laptop, dongle and router have been seized from their place.

According to police sources, MTNL’S Cuffe Parade exchange has a server through which customers could avail services like obtaining 3G internet, getting a new sim card, replacing a SIM card and other value-added services. The functioning of the server is linked to a service provisioning application. The server is mainly maintained by two private companies. Earlier this year, some errors were reported in the server, which resulted in the server and its services to shut down for two days.

MTNL carried out an internal check and it was revealed that the employees of the company, which was given the contract of maintenance of the server earlier, were behind the tampering of the system. MTNL’S senior manager Manoj Joshi in February this year lodged a criminal complaint in this regard with Mumbai Cyber police.

Investigators traced the IP address of the system used in the tampering to a reputed company in Bangalore. On Monday, four employees of this company were arrested. The four have been charged under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Information Technology Act. Police are further probing the case and did not rule out the possibility of the involvement of more people.