Second data breach of Telangana Police in a week
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The Telangana State Police are hit by a second data breach affecting their TSCOP app. The Telangana State Police, headquartered in Hyderabad, is the primary law enforcement agency for the state of Telangana, India. The TSCOP app was launched in 2018 for internal police use, providing instant crime-solving information.
The same hacker who previously compromised the HawkEye app is responsible for the latest breach of the TSCOP app. The hacker cxlaims that the attack was caused by bad security practice by the vendor WINC IT Services who created the app and have been embedding plain text passwords within the TSCOP app.
The data exposed via the TSCOP App breach includes:
- Offender records
- Police gun licenses
- Officer names
- Police station affiliations
- Designations
- Officer images
No details are disclosed about the number of individuals impacted by this breach.
The Telangana State Cyber Security Bureau has registered a case and begun an investigation into the breaches.
Update - as of 9th of June 2024, the Telangana Cyber Security Bureau (TGCSB) has apprehended Jatin Kumar, a 20-year-old student from Greater Noida, for hacking into the ‘Hawkeye’ mobile application. Jatin, who resides in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, posted details of the breach on databreachforum.st and attempted to sell the data for $150. He provided Telegram IDs ‘Adm1nfr1end’ and ‘Adm1nfr1ends’ for buyers interested in data from the Hawkeye and TSCOP applications, respectively.
He was arrested and will be brought to Hyderabad on a transit remand. Jatin has a history of cybercrimes, having been previously arrested by a special cell of Dwarka police station in New Delhi (Case 201 of 2023) for leaking Aadhaar card data and other sensitive information.
