CBI techie hosted ‘ cheat’ software on a US server

The CBI has written to the authorities concerned in the US and Russia, through the Interpol, seeking information about servers on which its arrested software programmer had hosted his illegal software for subverting “Tatkal” ticket booking system of the Indian railways.

According to sources during initial investigation it has emerged that Ajay Garg, assistant programmer at the agency, and his front, Anil Gupta, had hosted their illegal software on a USbased server while emails were created on a Russian server to avoid detection. They said the software created by them had to be hosted on a server and the end users could access it through a user name and password provided by Garg and Gupta. The duo used to charge ` 1,000- 1,200 from travel agents using their software. The software which they christened “Neo” was hosted on a USA- based server, they said.

Sources added it was done to speed up the traffic on their servers and also avoid any detection and probe by investigating agencies here. They said the agency has approached the Interpol seeking details of these back- end servers from the US and Russia. Thirty- five- year- old software engineer Garg had joined the CBI in 2012 through a selection process and had been working as an assistant programmer. He had also worked with the IRCTC, which handles the ticketing system of the railways, between 2007 and 2011. The CBI probe so far has indicated that Garg learnt the vulnerabilities of the IRCTC ticketing software during his tenure there.