In what cops believe is one of the first cases of cloud storage hacking to be solved in Mumbai, a 16-year-old was arrested on Sunday for hacking into the cloud storage and social media accounts of a TV actor and later blackmailing her for Rs 5 lakh, The Times of India reported.
The teenager, who has no formal training in computers, has been booked under IPC section 385 for extortion, and IT Act sections 66B and 66C for phishing and has been sent to an observation home.
On December 25 Tina Chopra, the actor, complained to the police that she was being blackmailed to pay Rs 5 lakh failing which her private pictures would be leaked. The police tracked the teenager in Dahisar (east) on Sunday and seized his mobile phone which was used for the hacking.
The TOI report further states, "Through phishing (acquiring information like usernames and passwords, often for malicious reasons, by masquerading as someone trustworthy), the boy gained access to Chopra's Gmail login ID and password (he had sent her a malicious link, which she clicked).He used the information from her email account to hack into her Facebook, Instagram and iCloud accounts, downloaded her private pictures and videos from the iCloud account and changed all her passwords."
A cop told TOI that the boy had been blackmailing the actor by sending her private pictures on WhatsApp. Though Chopra asked him to meet her and take the money, the youth told her to deposit it in a bank account.