Cops caught napping in sex domain
Source: The Statesman
Date: June 14, 2003
The original website of Calcutta Police has become a Canadian pornographic site offering ‘adult entertainment’. Launched five years ago by former police commissioner Mr Dinesh Vajpai, the site (http://www.calcuttapolice.com) was the first website of the city police. Soon after, the Marxist government decided to change the name of the city to Kolkata and everyone, apart from those idiosyncratic enough to believe their preferences overrode the wishes of the representatives — whatever their quality — of the people, followed suit. Among them were the state’s men-in-white who showed great alacrity in switching acronyms — CP became KP, and on the city cops’ website too.
But, as The Statesman discovered today — and KP’s cybercrime cell is apparently yet to find out — the men in uniform never bothered to keep track of the old site or cancel the domain to prevent misuse. Probably, used to the laidback ways of the state, none of them thought that anyone would hack into a police website to launch a business in adult entertainment! Well, business, even if it’s dirty business, has always known to have been a step ahead of the law.
The first page of the site offers pictures and text. The links — and the pop-up screens — connect to http://live.sex.explorer.com where more pictures and invitations to “live shows” are waiting. While the the first access is offered “free” to those above 18, as the calcuttapolice website gets “hotter”, money is asked for up front for further access (no comparison intended with well-documented ways of a section of city cops!)
The Statesman informed the police commissioner, Mr Sujay Chakraborty, about the pornographic site. “I have heard about this and we are trying to track down the people who have done this,” he said, adding that the force has stopped using the original website over a year ago. While The Statesman has no access to Mr Chakraborty’s high-profile team of cybercrime super sleuths or their equipment, it took us all of 45 minutes to find what the commissioner’s men “have been trying to track down” for apparently quite a while now.
This is what we found: The registrar was ‘DOTSTER’. The site was created on 5 March 2003 and it expires on 5 March 2004. It was last updated on 11 April. The administrative contact is Richard Mandice of Domain Strategy Inc, 20 St Aubin, Delson in Quebec, Canada. The internet protocol address of http://calcuttapolice. com which was 66.150.161.134 was constantly changing as the portal was moving from one server to another and one country to the other.
And hacking into the original city police website is not the first time hackers have had Kolkata cops on the mat — two years ago, a hacker managed to access the personal internet account of a deputy commissioner, detective department, Mr Banibrata Basu.
On your toes, sleepy joes! — With Rahul Das
Original article: http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=1&theme=&usrsess=1&id=15379
^macro[showdigestcomments;^uri[];Cops caught napping in sex domain]