Police have arrested a 35-year-old computer science dropout for his alleged involvement in the Reliance Jio data leak case. According to a report by PTI, the accused goes by the nickname ‘Imran Chhipa’ and was arrested in the Churu district in Rajasthan. The report notes that Chhipa is a resident of the town of Sujangarh and created the website ‘magicapk.com’ where all the user information was posted. The website was registered by Godaddy in May this year, and was taken down soon after reports of the data leak surfaced.
"We have seized the computer and other devices used by him to leak the data and he will be thoroughly interrogated. A team of Mumbai Police led by ACP Deepak Dhole had reached Churu district after tracking the IP address and will interrogate Chhipa,” Police told PTI. Analysis by the Maharashtra Cyber Police led investigators to locate where the suspected data breach occurred. It was also noted that the suspect’s computer, mobile, and storage devices have been seized and sent for investigation.
To recall, personal information such as name, email addresses and Aadhar numbers of Reliance Jio users were leaked earlier this week. While Jio had claimed that the information displayed on the website (Magicapk) was unverified, unsubstantiated, and unauthentic, our own investigation suggested that the information displayed on the website was accurate. A preliminary report by Jio claimed that the company’s own apps and sites were secure, and were not responsible for the leak, which may have happened from a vendors’ end. The leak is believed to be the biggest leak suffered by an Indian telecom company to date.