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Police say arrestees revealed that many groups around the country are engaged in the fraud
Published : 20 Feb 2023, 02:46 AM
Police have arrested five members of a group who allegedly accessed the national birth and death registration server to issue fake certificates by using third-party cookies over the past six months.
The law enforcers apprehended the suspects after identifying 796 cases of illegal certificates across six wards in Chattogram City Corporation.
The authorities shut the server temporarily after the intrusion and installed a two-step verification system, which requires a one-time password or OTP, to stop such fraud.
No complaints of fake birth certificates were filed after the new system was installed in the server and for ward-level users, said Asif Mohiuddin, an additional deputy commissioner at Chattogram Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crimes unit.
Initial interrogations revealed that several groups creating fake certificates were active around the country over Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger, each consisting of between 30 and 100 members.
THIRD-PARTY COOKIES
Police identified one of the arrestees, Sheikh Sezan from the Solimon Bari area of Lahagara in Narail, as the ring’s leader. Sezan dropped out after Higher Secondary Certificate exams and learnt to hack from content on the internet, including YouTube videos.
Citing Sezan’s statement, Asif said the suspect first used third-party cookies to steal the login ID and password of workers who have access to the server. He then accessed the server and issued fake birth certificates to people ready to pay for the document.
Cookies are small data blocks that track a user’s online preferences and present them with content using the stored information.
The website directly stores first-party cookies, which allow website owners to collect analytics data, remember language settings, and perform other functions that provide a good user experience
Third-party cookies are used for online advertising and placed on a website through a script or tag. It collects user information for a third party. Websites seek the consent of users to use cookies.
Officer Asif said the cookies used by Sezan did not show up on the website as he could crop them into hidden mode without notifying the users of any intrusion.
Asif said Sezan and his associates had been registering for certificates on the server for six months. But they also carried out illegal birth registrations over a year.
Sezan and his associates were involved in issuing fake birth certificates for six months by using other means before gaining access to the server, Asif said.
“We’re still investigating how exactly they acquired ward-level access,” he said.
Sezan also used to lend server ID and password to other hackers in the group for Tk 8,000-10,000 in pressing times, though he kept access to the final step of registration to himself, Asif said.
OTP
The authorities resumed services in two of the six wards where registration operations were suspended over fraudulent activities.
On Jan 29, the website of the Office of the Registrar General, Birth and Death Registration posted a notice that the server would be shut for “maintenance” until 9 pm the next day.
Another notice stated that users would require an OTP to sign in every time for security from Feb 3. Users were also asked to update their mobile numbers.
Md Iqbal Hossain, an IT official of the Chattogram City Corporation, said all users and passwords used for registration under the CCC were reset.
“Registration has resumed at Lalkhan Bazar and North Patenga wards, and technical work in the other four wards is still underway. Apart from that, registration in other wards is going smoothly.”
5,000 CERTIFICATES BY ONE GROUP
The authorities tracked the creation of four birth certificates at Chattogram’s Andarkilla, 10 at Pahartali, 40 at Dakshin Madhya Halishahar, 84 at North Patenga, 239 at Lalkhan Bazar and 409 at South Kattali wards.
The counter-terrorism unit was tasked with looking into four cases of online encroachment. Police then arrested Md Mostakim, 22, Delowar Hossain Simon, 23, Abdur Rahman Arif and an unnamed young man aged 16 on Jan 23.
Based on the confessions of Mostakim and the unnamed young man in the juvenile court, police arrested Md Sagar Ahmed Jovan, 23, from Muradpur area in the port city on Feb 16. His interrogation led to the arrest of Sezan, 23.
Sezan carried out his illegal ventures at a shop named Adnan Computer and Studio.
Asif said questioning Sezan led to the arrest of Mehedi Hasan, 23, in Dhaka’s Kalabagan with fake birth registration certificates and the official seal of the Dhaka North City Corporation birth registration office. He is a student of computer science and engineering at Sonargaon University.
Later police arrested Shakil Hasan, 23, in the Kamarkhanda area in Sirajganj and Masud Rana, 27, in Gazipur following information from the arrestees.
Police seized their computers and laptops used for making fake birth certificates, said Liakat Ali Khan, a deputy commissioner at CMP’s counter-terrorism unit.
In an initial interrogation, the arrestees said they and several other groups have been forging certificates countrywide for a long time.
“The group has created and distributed around 5,000 fake birth certificates thus far, taking Tk 500-2,000 for each certificate,” said Liakat.
Police believe the group has nearly 100 members, but only a few people carried out registrations, while the others sold their services to people interested in fake certificates.
He said the group is connected countrywide through a WhatsApp group. They conducted their illegal ventures in Dhaka city corporations, Cumilla, Mymensingh, Faridpur, Bagerhat and several other areas.
The group used seals and signatures of councillors from areas of fake certificate seekers after putting in the final pieces of information to create certificates.
