Bengaluru, Jul 1: A young software engineer was arrested on Friday for allegedly hacking chief minister Siddaramaiah's Twitter handle in July 2014.
The handle, @CM of Karnataka, was hacked days before its launch, and controversial statements were posted on the platform. The handle was later renamed @naanegaddappa. The accused, Madhusudhan RK (28), is from Nodekoppalu village in Mandya taluk and is employed with private firm on Sarjapur Road.
Madhusudhan, who is a bachelor and lives with his colleagues, confessed to have hacked the account for fun. "I had no evil intentions. I wanted to mock the system by hacking the CM's account and post ridiculous messages," police quoted him as saying.
Siddaramaiah's offical Twitter handle was to be launched on August 12, 2014. However, during the run up, officials noticed that a few posts on the CM's temporary Facebook account were mysteriously appearing as tweets on the Twitter account. They promptly lodged a complaint with cybercrime police.
The hacker posted fake news on the CM's Facebook page and Twitter handle. One such report said the government was going to develop 135 slums in Bengaluru for Rs 2,000 crore.
M Chandrasekhar, inspector general of police, CID (economics wing), said they had a tough time tracking down the accused as he's an expert software engineer. "The team led by DySP MD Sharath doggedly pursued the case for almost three years and zeroed in on Madhusudhan on Friday. He did everything he could to put police off his trail. However, our cybercrime team outsmarted him," he said.
Another police officer said investigators had to contend with non-cooperation from stakeholders. "Legal notices had to be issued to get everyone to cooperate," he added.
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