Teen who barely knows English hacks into Hyderabad company’s system, costs them Rs 60 lakh

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1. A 19-year-old from Odisha hacked into Hyderabad-based company, Lloyd Electricals and Engineering Ltd., resulting in a loss of Rs 60 lakh.

2. The teenager, Himalaya Mohanty, is an IT student from Balasore district and can barely speak or read English. However, the village boy managed to learn hacking through online forums using his 3 inch smartphone and communicated through a translation software.

3. Mohanty, then hacked the toll-free calling system of Lloyd Electricals and posted their phone number along with instructions for making free outgoing calls using their number on his website. Users simply had to dial the toll free number, punch a code and then enter the number they wanted to call.

4. The company realized something was amiss when it received a telephone bill of around Rs 60 lakh instead of the usual Rs 1 lakh. Later, the cyber police were alerted and Mohanty’s involvement was discovered. The probe also uncovered how the boy would ask people to contact him if they wanted to learn hacking by posting a number on his website, but when they would call him, he hacked their phones by installing a trojan virus and tracked them.

5. Although the teenager confessed his crimes, he also revealed that he did not gain any monetary benefits out of hacking Lloyd Electricals or other people.