IRCTC Website Hacked, made lakhs by selling fake tickets.

A man who used to hack train ticket booking website IRCTC to generate fake tickets was arrested from Dakshan Darwaza area in eastern Uttar Pradesh's Basti town on Thursday by a joint team of the Central Bureau of Investigation and railway's vigilance department, police said.

Hamid was arrested by a team of officials from CBI's Bengaluru branch and the Central Railway, which camped in Basti for three days, following an information that he had created a software to sell tickets by hacking the IRCTC website, police officer Rohit Mishra said. Hamid had tied up with a number of people engaged in the fake ticket racket all over the country and used to book railway tickets using the software, Mishra said, adding that 10 laptops, 16 ATM cards, two PAN cards and Rs 50 lakh in cash were recovered from him.

He was taken on transit remand by the CBI and the Central Railway vigilance team for further questioning, the police officer added. A senior official said the online sale of such software raises serious questions about how secure is the website of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC).

He said the software, which can hack IRCTC's website, can't be developed without connivance of officials from the agency which developed the original software for IRCTC's website. Most of the time when you get 'no room' on the IRCTC website while trying to book train tickets, it's not due to the massive rush but software which hack the site to make tickets available online. There are several websites, which are selling illegal software which claim to generate the first PNR between 10-20 seconds.

One of these websites Black Ts provides instant solution to the problems faced in running the software and also claims that its has bypassed the need for OTP (One Time Password) required for online payment while booking tickets. Another website tatkalsoftware.com makes similar offers for sale of illegal software for faster booking of Tatkal tickets.