New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday has sent Letter Rogatory to Canada seeking from of a Vancouver-based encrypted e-mail service provider about a user identified as Hushmail, who had allegedly hired a Pune-based hacker to break into e-mail accounts.
The agency has sought details like login details, IP addresses used by the user to login, the locations from the account and about identity of the accused whose user id is Hushmail. They said the agency has so far not been able to get these details from Canada.
The sources said although the agency had managed to get most of the details during the questioning of the hacker, who has been arrested but to prove the case in court, it requires cyber forensic evidence.
On a tip off from Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agency had registered two FIRs under Indian Penal Code of theft and provisions of violation of Information Technology Act relating to identity theft (Section 66(c)) read with provisions of hacking and assisting in stealing information.
A 32-year-old Ankit Tiwari, who was named as accused in the FIR was allegedly working for his clients through two websites - www.hirehacker.net and www.anonymiti.com - with servers located in the US.
He was offering services of illegally accessing passwords of e-mail accounts in exchange for a fee varying from USD 50-200 per hacked account.
The sources said during initial questioning, it has surfaced that Tiwari allegedly hacked into 900 e-mail accounts between 2011 to 2013, of which 171 were Indians.
In one such case, a user of Hushmail with e-mail id nakpunyamak@hushmail.com had allegedly hired Tiwari to hack email accounts, the agency said.
The CBI sleuths stated that they had also sought details of the Hushmail, his identity and other address as he can also be prosecuted in the case.