In 2011, when he hacked the Kolkata traffic police’s website and claimed his responsibility, senior cops at Lalbazar, the city police headquarters, initially ignored his talent.
However, in the next two years, he became their troubleshooter in cyber crime cases of the detective department and is now going to train them along with their counterparts in three new police commissionerates and criminal investigation department (CID) on cyber security.
Meet 22-year-old ethical hacker-turned-entrepreneur Sourav Karmakar, a final-year B. Tech (computer science) student at B.P. Poddar Institute of Management and Technology.
According to him, a passion drove him to hacking after watching Hollywood blockbuster Die Hard 4.0 on cyber attacks.
About his hacking of www.kolkatatrafficpolice.gov.in [1] he told this newspaper, “I hacked the site in June, mailed them to their official email IDs and even sent a report via their Facebook page. But there was no response from them initially.”
A month later Sourav got in touch with a DD officer. “In August, I was called to Lalbazar and my effort was recognised. I then explained to them the flaws and how to patch them up,” he added. Since then, Sourav has been with the Kolkata police’s CYKOPs team. From next month, he will start training cyber cops.
“Four officers each from the Kolkata police’s DD and Bidhannagar police commissionerate’s cyber cell and three each from Barrackpore and Howrah police commissionerates and CID will attend the two-month programme from September 7 at our office in Salt Lake,” Sourav elaborated.
Originally from Chandernagore in Hooghly, Sourav co-founded a company, SAS Securities, on IT and cyber security solutions, with his friend Ankur Biswas on May 1 last year. “With 15 clients, the company clocked a turnover over `4 lakh within a year,” he informed.
Links:
[1] http://www.kolkatatrafficpolice.gov.in