AHMEDABAD: A single default password – “admin123” – was all it took to unlock a national nightmare. What began at Payal Maternity Hospital in Rajkot as a case of careless digital housekeeping spiralled into one of India’s most disturbing cyber scandals. Hackers breached the hospital’s CCTV system through its default admin login, stole hours of intimate footage of women being examined in the gynaecology ward, and fed it into an international porn fetish network for profit. The access logs spanned nearly a year, from Jan 2024 through early Dec 2024, until the perpetrators were arrested this Feb. The hackers were able to steal at least 50,000 clips over nine months from across the country.

Investigators: 80 CCTV dashboards compromised The scam came to light after teaser clips from the Rajkot facility were posted online on YouTube channels like “Megha Mbbs” and “cp monda”. Customers were led to Telegram groups to buy the footage, for anything between Rs 700 and Rs 4,000. Investigators found about “80 CCTV dashboards compromised nationwide, including in Pune, Mumbai, Nashik, Surat, Ahmedabad, and Delhi”. The victims ranged across 20 states, spanning hospitals, schools, corporate houses, cinema halls, factories, and even private residences. Despite the primary arrests being made earlier in 2025, investigators found that these illegally obtained clips were still available on Telegram groups until at least June.Investigators found that many of these CCTV systems still used factory-set passwords like “admin123”. An Ahmedabad cybercrime branch officer told TOI: “The primary method used was a ‘brute force attack’ (hackers using a program or bot to try every possible combination of letters and numbers for a lock).” Parit Dhameliya, the lead hacker in the operation, a BCom graduate, employed three different software programs to achieve this. With stolen credentials, another accused, Rohit Sisodiya – who was later arrested in Delhi and used a diploma in medical laboratory technology as a cover – used a tool meant for legitimate remote viewing to input stolen login details and gain unauthorised access to the hospital’s cameras.