Chennai engineer gets 2-years in jail for hacking, data theft

court here has sentenced a Chennai-based software professional to two years' rigorous imprisonment for hacking servers of a local firm and stealing confidential data. 

The court had on March 31 found Prabhakar Sampath guilty under Section 66 of Information Technology Act. Apart from the jail term, the court also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on him. 

Sampath was accused of hacking the servers of SIS InfotechPrivate Limited, a city-based company, Superintendent of Police (CID-cyber crimes) U Ramamohan said in a release today. 

The company sells market research reports. Sampath, a B-Tech degree-holder wokring with an IT firm in Chennai, hacked the server online and downloaded confidential reports in 2008, the SP said. 

"The accused was traced through technical investigation, and police seized a pen drive, computers systems from his house and workplace containing research reports," the release added.