Rao used to work at an agency to fill client forms online. During the course of his work, he found bugs in the passport website with the help of which he could access the NIC server and succeeded in submitting the passport applications with confirmed dates under the Tatkal scheme even though the dates were yet to be officially released by the passport authorities.
The cyber intrusion was not meant to steal data of Government departments which have their databanks on NIC servers.
The cyber escapade came to light when Hyderabad police busted a gang of seven persons who were charging a hefty fee for getting confirmed appointments for submitting passport applications under Tatkal scheme.
This incident shows the careless state of security on Government run websites. Luckily, this was a small time guy trying to make money. It could very well have been case of passport applicants database being compromised. Imagine, what would have happened with that kind of information in wrong hands.
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