New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party government and Congress of Karnataka are face to face on the issue of bitcoin theft and cybercrime. Hacker Shri Krishna Ramesh alias Shriki, who became a big reason for this political tension, had made many claims during the interrogation. Ramesh said that he was also involved in the hacking of the cryptocurrency exchange in the year 2016. He said that he was learning coding from class 4 itself. Congress has demanded a probe into the matter through a special investigation team.
Shriki was arrested by the Central Crime Branch (CCB) of Karnataka Police on 18 November 2020 in connection with drug peddling. He had bought drugs internationally using bitcoin on the dark web. In the subsequent interrogation, the CCB found that a software engineer by profession was involved in several cybercrimes. According to media reports, it was revealed in the investigation that Shriki used to hack their website and steal their data.
After hacking the website, he used to demand payment in bitcoin to unlock it. Apart from this, he confessed to creating ‘mirror’ sites or fake payment portals. He used to do this to steal credit or debit card information of common users. He has also confessed to stealing Rs 11.5 crore from the e-procurement cell of Karnataka e-Governance Centre.
During interrogation, Shriki also mentioned the hacking of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex on 2 August 2016. During that time the hackers together stole 1 lakh 20 thousand bitcoins, which was worth about Rs 7.2 crore. In the statement given to the police, Shri Krishna has claimed that he started learning technical tricks at the age of 8. However, a statement issued by the Bengaluru Police said, “The examination of digital evidence by cyber experts has revealed that most of his claims are baseless.”
