CBI seeks info on person from Canada who hired Indian hacker

New Delhi: The CBI has asked Canada to give details of a user of Hushmail, a Vancouver-based encrypted e-mail service provider, who had allegedly hired a Pune-based hacker to break into e-mail accounts.

CBI sources said judicial requests seeking details of user who hired the hacker have been sought by the agency through Letter Rogatory.

Details like login details, IP addresses used by the user to login, the locations from the account was used have been asked by the CBI.

The sources said although the agency had managed to get most of the details during the questioning of the hacker who has been arrested but to prove the case in court it requires cyber forensic evidence.

They said the agency has so far not been able to get these details from Canada.

On a tip off from FBI, CBI had registered two FIRs under IPC of theft and provisions of violation of Information Technology Act relating to identity theft (Section 66(c)) read with provisions of hacking and assisting in stealing information.

Ankit Tiwari, 32, who was named as accused in the FIR was allegedly working for his clients through two websites - www.hirehacker.net and www.anonymiti.com - with servers located in the US,

He was offering services of illegally accessing passwords of e-mail accounts in exchange for a fee varying from USD 50-200 per hacked account.

The sources said during initial questioning, it has surfaced that Tiwari allegedly hacked into 900 e-mail accounts between 2011 to 2013, of which 171 were Indians.

In one such case, a user of Hushmail with e-mail id nakpunyamak@hushmail.com had allegedly hired Tiwari to hack email accounts, the sources said.

The sources said the matter is being pursued with the Canadian authorities.