Dark Net Peril Web Of Crimes Rattles Cops

Use of hidden sites to push drugs, child porn & human trafficking spikes across cities as agencies struggle to break into networks

- Chayyanika Nigam

Sleuths of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) from its Delhi zone unit said on Sunday that they had made India’s first Dark Net crime arrest from Lucknow.

The catch was 21-year-old hotel management graduate Dipu Singh, who had shipped hundreds of psychotropic drug parcels abroad in the garb of sex stimulation medicines. About 12,000 tablets worth crores of rupees were seized from his house.

Last week, a Singapore-based cybersecurity company detected a database of credit and debit cards, issued by Indian banks, up for sale on Dark Web.

The database included payment records of 4,61,976 cards. The company informed the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERTIn) about the leak. A probe is on.

Around the same time, a Kochi cybersecurity startup found a file containing around 93 million phone numbers registered with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s National Do Not Call Registry (NDNS) — all for sale on Dark Net.