Gaana.Com hacked details of millions exposed

A hacker claiming to be from Pakistan hacked the website of music streaming services Gaana.Com and posted details of its over 10 million users on his Facebook page. 

Later, Satyan Gajwani, the CEO of Times Internet, which runs Gaana.Com, offered a business deal to the hacker for fixing loopholes in the IT system of company. 

The hacker, whose name was given as Mak Man and mentioned that he lives in Lahore, Pakistan, said: “I here by confirm that no financial information was accessed during the hack of Gaana.Com…. Database was so huge that I didn’t even bother looking … And no information was dumped and stored locally … Not even a single row.” 

He said that the hack was “just a POC (proof of concept) to highlight the issue which was grabbing the details directly from their DBMS (Database management systems) and I repeat again information was not stored locally.” 

In his reply on the hacker’s Facebook page, Gajwani said: “First of all, I’d like to apologize personally if you had shared these reports and we didn’t respond earlier. Totally unacceptable by us, and I’m looking into it.” 

A Times Internet spokesperson confirmed Gajwani’s comment. However, there was no reply to email queries in this regard. 

Gajwani in his reply on hacker’s Facebook page further said that he thought that the intention of the hacker was not to expose personal information about Gaana users but to highlight the vulnerability and offered a deal to the hacker. 

“And finally, if possible, I’d appreciate if we could hire you as a consultant to help us find any more vulnerabilities across our network, so that we can keep our products as secure as possible. If you’re interested, message me directly, as I’d be very grateful for your advice,” Gajwani said. 

In the evening, Gaana.Com displayed ‘Site is down due to server maintenance.