(MENAFN- Live Mint) A probe into a scandal which came to light after CCTV footage of women undergoing medical checkups at a hospital in Gujarat's Rajkot appeared on porn sites, has revealed how a common password led to a breach of security.

The hackers involved in the crime, not only breached the CCTV system of the Maternity Home in Rajkot from where they stole the footage before it appeared on porn sites and made available for sale between ₹700 and ₹4,000, but they also stole at least 50,000 clips over nine months from across the country.

Investigators found that about 80 CCTV dashboards - from hospitals, schools, corporate houses and other places - were compromised nationwide, including in Pune, Mumbai, Nashik, Surat, Ahmedabad, and Delhi, reported TOI.

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According to NDTV, hospital authorities are unaware of how the CCTV footage got leaked.

"Our CCTV server seems to have been hacked. However, we are also unaware of why this happened and will inform the police," NDTV quoted Dr Amit Akbari as saying.

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A probe into the matter revealed that 'admin123', a common password used by several users, was used on many of the hacked CCTV systems.

The lead hacker in the scandal, who is a BCom graduate, had employed three different software programs.

"The primary method used was a 'brute force attack' (hackers using a program or bot to try every possible combination of letters and numbers for a lock)," TOI quoted an Ahmedabad cybercrime branch officer as saying.

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According to the the data in the latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), cyber crimes have shown 31 per cent increase in 2023, with 86,420 cases registered in the year, compared to 65,983 cases in 2022.

Cyber crimes in Gujarat registered a significant rise of 40.79 per cent in 2023 as 1,995 cases were registered in the year as compared to 1,417 in 2022.

6 held for routing ₹200 cr to cyber criminals

Six persons were arrested by the Gujarat police's CID-Crime for allegedly routing ₹200 crore to Dubai-based cyber criminals using nearly 100 'mule' bank accounts, officials said. A mule account is a bank account used by criminals to receive, transfer, or launder illicit funds with or without the knowledge of the account holder.

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