An unidentified person allegedly accessed the Aeronautical Development Agency’s (ADA) TRACES account of the Income Tax Department and logged in by changing their user ID and password. The accused also revised returns for a private engineering company in Bengaluru.
Rangarajan S., a senior executive with the ADA, filed a complaint with the cybercrime police of the Criminal Investigation Department on Tuesday. Based on the complaint, the police registered a case under various sections of the Information Technology Act.
In his complaint, Mr. Rangarajan said the hackers not only accessed details of financial transactions, but also made changes in the TDS for 2017-18. In addition to this, the hackers also allegedly changed the password, email ID and mobile IDs, and updated the PAN details of the company they belonged to. The police said the fraud might have occurred between March and May this year and come to light recently during the verification of official accounts.
Confirming the account’s hacking, senior ADA officials said that though there has been a breach in the account, there is no security concern. “This is not a serious issue as the account was in the open domain. No data pertaining to the agency has been compromised,” an officer said.
The cybercrime police are trying to ascertain the motive behind the hacking.
