IT professional held for hacking company code, destroying data

Mohali, October 4
Deepak Sharma, a former employee of Mohali-based company Dell, was today arrested by the cyber wing of the crime branch of the Punjab Police for allegedly destroying vital data of the company and tampering with the service record of employees. He was found to have hacked the source code of the company.
Acting out of revenge for being thrown out of job, the Panchkula-based IT professional, by accessing the internal email-ID of the HR department of the company, tampered with service records of certain employees “by giving them promotion and salary hike”. In one specific case, an employee was given a salary of 140 per cent. He was also paid the amount.
The company runs a call centre in Industrial Area, Phase 8, here. The cyber wing swung into action after Prabhakar Raju, site director of the company, approached the police for investigation and registration of case.
A spokesman of the company said a terminated employee had gained unauthorised access to internal Dell systems. There has been no access to or compromise on customer data. The unauthorised access was discovered early due to the stringent systemic checks within our systems. This is a violation of our code of business conduct and are working closely with the relevant authorities for appropriate action.
SSP Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh said within a day of receiving the complaint, the police tracked down Deepak Sharma and arrested him. He was remanded to police custody after being produced in Mohali Courts here today. An FIR under various provisions of Information Technology (IT) Act and IPC has been registered against the IT professional.
In the complaint to the police, Prabhakar Raju stated that somebody had got unauthorised access to the system and used internal mail-ID of the HR department. Many unauthorised transactions were made in the system, it was pointed out.
The SSP said on the basis of the investigation it was established beyond doubt that Deepak was the main culprit behind all these manipulations. The police has seized his home computer that he had used to make these unauthorised changes. The police was hopeful of getting more details about the extent of damage done by the suspect and the name of other persons involved, if any.