BENGALURU: In a huge voucher hack, an unknown hacker stole voucher codes worth more than Rs. 2.2 crore and sold them at a lower price.
The hacker has now given a 72-hour deadline to the company to pay him $5,000, failing which, he has threatened to share confidential information.
According to police sources, Nreach Online Services Pvt Ltd issued vouchers to the employees of IT firms who are its clients.
The voucher codes are sent to the employees by email and SMS. The SMS services are outsourced to a company. An unknown person hacked Nreach’s server and downloaded the codes that were with that outsourced company's application.
Police sources said the codes were sold in a private group on Facebook for a lower price. More than 30 lakh codes were used and products were ordered and out of which 13 lakh orders were also delivered. But the whole issue came to light around 4 pm on June 3 when Nreach’s vendors and competitors received an email from guidetohack@gmail.com from a person who claimed himself as Sunny Nehra.
Sunny said that he was the one who hacked and downloaded the vouchers.
During an internal investigation, the company officials met a person who got the voucher code from Sunny. He told them that the codes were sold on a private group in Facebook called ‘Osmium’, police sources said.
“Nreach then asked its vendors to withhold the vouchers and codes. Around 2 am on June 18, the company received an email from Osmium@tutanota.com where the sender demanded $5,000 to be paid within 72 hours. If not, he threatened to post customer and confidential information of the company on the internet,” police said.
HSR Layout Police have registered a case. Nreach was unavailable for comment.