Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

White Hats help police nab Net evangelist

HYDERABAD: Heralding a welcome change in fighting crime, three ethical hackers helped the city police nab a Net evangelist, who scribbled anti-Muslim slogans in city buses six months ago leading to protests.

The Net evangelist identified by police as K. Sreenivas played a game of hide and seek in the virtual world with the police and the three teenaged ethical hackers (called White Hats in Net lingo) for more than a month, but proved no match to the capabilities of the teenagers. Police have not released the names of the teenaged White Hats, but said two of them were in first year of engineering courses, while another was in his senior Intermediate.

The Detective Department sleuths were at their wit’s end investigating the case registered in Chilkalguda police station on anti-Muslim graffiti scribbled behind the seats in some city buses.

Incensed over the slogans denigrating their religion, Muslims had agitated and pelted stones on buses. Investigating the case against a faceless entity was indeed a daunting task for the police.

However, the only clue was an email ID ‘ truenews_777@yahoo.com’ scribbled beneath the controversial jottings. Police created three fake email IDs and began exchanging emails with the Net evangelist who responded initially, but later stopped replying to the mails. The IP addresses were collected from the received mail but the police could only broadly identify the Net centres in Regimental Bazar from where the mails were sent.

It was at this juncture, the White Hats came in contact with the police officials. After browsing through the newly launched police website ( www.hyderabadpolice.gov.in), the ethical hackers offered their services to the police in investigations of cyber crimes.

When police confided in them their difficulty in tracing the Net evangelist, the trio accepted the challenge. Observing the tendency of the Net evangelists to be hyperactive on the Net, they began scouring the social networking sites like Orkut, MySpace and others, and zeroed in on Sreenivas.

They created another fake email ID in the name of a woman ( vandana89_crazy@yahoo.com) and lured Sreenivas into chatting over Yahoo Messenger.

Once he came on chat mode, they identified the IP address and located the Net café from where chatting was taking place and tipped off the police. Initially, the police team which rushed there missed Sreenivas as there was a power cut and the Net café was empty.

But the moment he came online, the ethical hackers called the police again and this time, they could nab him even as he was chatting with ‘Vandana’.

Sreenivas, a resident of Peerzadiguda, had become a Net addict and then a Net evangelist after browsing through the social networking websites.

He started attending group discussions on website and later wanted to propagate his beliefs by writing slogans in buses. Police profusely thanked the unnamed White Hats.

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