YouTuber ‘Crazy Sumit’, associate nabbed for kiss-and-run videos

He did what any tech savvy individual would do, and he erased his digital footprints and went underground. The police were at its wits end as Sumit had literally vanished. But the cyber team from Crime Branch  managed to track him down by using the social engineering hacking procedure. 

Sumit Kumar Singh was apprehended on Thursday evening from his residence in Ashok Vihar, Phase III in Gurugram. Along with Sumit, his cameraman Satyajeet Kadian was also apprehended for his involvement in the kissing prank videos.

The Crime Branch team also recovered a laptop, video camera, wireless mikes and an award trophy given by YouTube to Sumit for surpassing 1,00,000 subscribers.

After the investigation was taken up, Sumit had disappeared and his whereabouts were relatively unknown.

The traditional methods of tracing him through his call records proved ineffective as he had dumped all his phones. A source close to the Cyber Cell team which cracked the case told Millennium Post: “He was impossible to trace for the police as he had gone underground. We had to write to YouTube and other intermediary services but it would have taken at least 15 days for a reply. So we used social engineering to track his whereabouts.” 

Social engineering is an attack used by hackers which relies heavily on human interaction and is used to subvert the security architecture of an organisation by tricking people into breaking security procedures. However, since Sumit had gone underground, entrapping him would have proved to be an arduous task. So the team chose to use social engineering hack to map out all the people connected to Sumit via the prank videos. By the time the attack was being planned, the team had analysed several social media profiles and eventually, the closest connection to Sumit, Lovkesh Kataria, had fallen into the net cast by the engineering hack.

“He was involved in a photography organisation called Titlygraphy based in Gurugram. When we went through his profile, we found that he also made similar obscene videos. He was questioned and later after some sustained pressure, he blurted out Sumit’s location to us,” said the source.

During his interrogation, he revealed the identity of his cameraman and Satyajeet Kadian was also arrested from Gurugram.

“The accused have pleaded innocence by claiming that the woman involved in the kissing prank where known to them. We are waiting for the woman to come forward and record their statements. 

Once the woman comes forward, they will be cross questioned and their statements will be examined,” said Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch), Ravindra Yadav.