The Indian authorities announced last week that they had arrested a Russian hacker for illegally intruding into a software platform for the engineering entrance assessment the previous year.
Based on reports, the suspect was apprehended by India’s Bureau of Immigration at a particular international airport in New Delhi and allegedly came from Kazakhstan.
The Indian law enforcement agency did not disclose the suspect’s identity or nationality during the initial announcement of the crime. However, several Indian news reports acquired a scoop and identified the hacker’s name, Mikhail Shargin.
The investigation revealed that the authorities placed the hacker’s part in the crime in the alleged irregularities in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-Main) that happened last year.
Moreover, the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-Main) is a standardised exam that is the bar for admitting incoming first-year students to engineering colleges in India.
According to the law enforcement agency, the incident occurred in September last year. The Russian hacker allegedly breached the iLeon software, the platform where the exam was held.
The Russian hacker will solve the admission exams for the students.
The Russian hacker’s objective was to acquire remote access to a particular set of co-conspirators that would help solve the questions on the exam for the students. Further, the investigators accused Shargin’s affiliates of controlling and tampering with the results of the online examination of Joint Entrance Examination Mains.
The authorities also accused the hackers of helping the hopeful students to be admitted to top National Institutes of Technology in India in exchange for huge payments. The hackers profited from these payments since they offered to solve the questionnaires in the entrance examination for the chosen institution.
In addition, the hacker’s scheme also included a financial element for the operators since they will charge from 12 to 15 lakh Rupees from each aspiring student that secures a spot for admission in their chosen college institution.
As of now, the Indian government has conducted searches for several players across the cities of Bengaluru, Delhi, Indore, Jamshedpur, and Pune. The investigation has resulted in confiscating more than 20 laptops and seven computers that will serve as evidence.
