Teen villager hacks company’s toll-free number, gets arrested

Mohanty, a native of Balasore, managed to find a way into EPABX toll-free number.

Mohanty, a native of Balasore, managed to find a way into EPABX toll-free number. (Pixabay)

An Odisha-based 19-year-old villager named Himalaya Mohanty hacked into a Hyderabad-based company to cause the latter a loss of ₹60 lakh, according to reports. Not everything worked out for Mohanty though as he is currently spending time in jail.

Mohanty, who is a native of Shivapura village, Balasore, managed to find a way into EPABX toll-free number operated by Hyderabad-based Lloyd Electricals and Engineering Ltd firm. Mohanty, according to reports, used a mobile phone to upload the code along with the toll-free number of Lloyd.

This allowed Mohanty to enable the option of outgoing facility. He uploaded the link of Lloyd along with a code, which allowed anyone to make an outgoing call. The information he posted only had his contact information, and sometimes, he hacked the phone of the person who contacted him.

The incident, which occurred in November, costed Lloyd a whopping sum of ₹60 lakh in telephone bills for the toll-free number. According to the report, the typical monthly bill for the toll-free number for Lloyd was ₹1 lakh.

In its investigation, the cybercrime police was able to locate the IP address of the abuser. After they confronted Mohanty, he apparently confessed of his hacking crime. Cops were surprised to learn that Mohanty did not know how to speak English, as he was an active member of many hacking forums.