How 'admin123' Led To Hospital Footage Of Women Being Uploaded On Porn Sites

A lack of digital housekeeping led to footage of women undergoing gynaecological checkups at a maternity hospital in Gujarat's Rajkot being uploaded to porn websites, an investigation has revealed.

A scandal had broken out in February when clips of women in various stages of undress at the Payal Maternity Home in Rajkot appeared on porn sites and made available for sale on Telegram groups. The hospital authorities had said that their server had been hacked.

"I don't know how the hospital videos went viral. Our CCTV server seems to have been hacked. However, we are also unaware of why this happened and will inform the police," Dr Amit Akbari, who works at the hospital, had said. 

Some people behind the hacking had been arrested the same month but the videos remained up for sale on Telegram groups until at least June.

An investigation revealed that the maternity home's CCTV dashboard was one of 80 that had been hacked across India, including in Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Nashik, Surat, and Ahmedabad. The hackers got access to footage from the hospital for nearly all of 2024, as well as recordings from schools, corporate houses, cinema halls, factories, and even homes.

Investigators said most of the places that had been hacked, including the hospital, had retained the default password for the CCTV dashboard - admin123. The hackers used a brute force attack, using combinations of words, numbers and symbols to gain access to the systems. Since the password was so simple, they could hack these dashboards with relatively little effort.

Experts said the hacking reinforces the need for strong passwords and the use of two-factor authentication where available. Institutions, they said, need to enforce this even more because the data of others, including footage of women in the hospital's case, is at stake. 

(With inputs from Mahendra Prasad)