NEW DELHI, 27 September 2004 — The Indian Railways, which launched on-line railway ticket bookings a few months back, has become the latest victim of cyber crime.
In Lucknow, a student of computer applications used credit card numbers of other people to buy train tickets. The transaction was possible because the credit card numbers did not have to be verified.
“Deepak Aggarwal told us how he used to generate credit card numbers numerically by trial and error. When they turned out to be valid he used them to buy tickets, which were actually delivered to him,” said Kamal Saxena , senior superintendent of police, Lucknow. After the payment was made electronically, the tickets were delivered by a courier company to a fake address provided by Deepak on the website.
The scam was discovered when people complained to the railways that their credit cards were being used to buy train tickets. Deepak, who has arrested Saturday, says his intention was not to steal, but just to see if the transaction was possible.
“I did not intend to steal tickets. I also did not know if the transaction had actually been made and was valid. To confirm whether the transactions had actually been made, I visited three cyber cafes,” Deepak was quoted by police as saying. As the crime was detected in time, people on whose credit cards the tickets were purchased did not lose money. But the scam has once more highlighted the need to secure transactions over the Internet.
