Russian hacker helped 820 cheat in JEE-Mains: CBI tells Court

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday told a Delhi Court that the arrested Russian hacker Mikhail Shargin aided in cheating 820 students by manipulating the online system in last year’s JEE-Mains, the entrance exam for admission to India’s top engineering colleges such as the IITs. So far, 24 people have been arrested.

The 25-year-old Russian national has not been cooperating with the investigators, the CBI told the court today. “He is a professional hacker, and broke into iLeon software,” the agency said.

He was arrested yesterday from Indira Gandhi International Airport on arrival from Kazakhstan for questioning in connection with the alleged tampering of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains about a year ago — taken by over 9 lakh students last September.

Shargin told the court that if the CBI wanted to access his electronic devices, it should be in his presence. The CBI asked the court to direct him to share his usernames and passwords.

The exam is held only on control-restricted computers at designated exam centres. Shargin hacked into the system so that students could grant “remote access” to his associates, who then solved the question papers on computers elsewhere, says the probe.

The NDTV reported that the “teachers” or “coaches” outside the centres were able to take charge of the students’ computers and solve the questions. The software was provided by world-renowned Tata Consultancy Services or TCS.

In September last year, the CBI had booked Affinity Education Pvt Ltd and its three directors, Siddharth Krishna, Vishwambhar Mani Tripathi, and Govind Varshney, besides other touts and associates for alleged manipulation of examination, reported DNA.

According to the NDTV, the investigation so far says the “remote access” was provided from an exam centre in Sonepat, Haryana. Initially, 20 students were believed to have cheated and were, therefore, banned from taking the exam for the next three years.

A case was registered by the CBI, which conducted raids in several cities and seized laptops and other equipment that led to Mikhail Shargin, and the net has since widened. The scam involves several foreign nationals, sources said.

Meanwhile, Russian retail chain ‘DNS’ (Digital Network System) disclosed yesterday that they suffered a data breach that exposed the personal information of customers and employees, according to the tech portal bleepingcomputer.com. DNS is Russia’s second-largest computer and home appliance store chain, with 2,000 branches and 35,000 employees, according to the portal.

-IANS