LUCKNOW: What if the servers of universities are tampered with and its database altered? It would lead to mayhem in the educational set up.

That's the exact threat looming over country's biggest technical education university — Uttar Pradesh Technical University (UPTU), whose website and database have been hacked for past seven months. Worse, the university remains in oblivion.

Rahul Singh, a Kanpur-based hactivist, successfully managed to access datasets of about 800-odd colleges affiliated to UPTU in December 2013. He has gathered full access to the university's servers, including passwords of all email accounts, college logins, official logins and most importantly the database of lakhs of students enrolled in the university.

Thankfully, Rahul is an ethical hacker, meaning he has no intention of causing any harm to the university.

Speaking exclusively with TOI, Rahul shared he is having access to complete database and login passwords of UPTU (www.uptu.ac.in) since December 12, 2013. "In December, I sent a mail to UPTU vice-chancellor, but no one bothered to reply. I have left the database as it is and haven't changed any files. My motive is to let the authorities know about the bug but none seems to be concerned about the huge database which, if a criminal has access to, can lead to serious damages," he said.

Rahul also managed to penetrate into the website of Mahamaya Technical University (MTU) - www.mtunoida.com. MTU was formed on 1 May, 2010, after bifurcation of UPTU but the decision was later revoked.

"My aim behind hacking was to let UPTU know about the bug. I tried to contact them but in vain. I hope they look into the security aspect as well while putting datasets online. I can do anything you can imagine with the website now. I can mail as the VC or as college to anyone. I have the complete password list, the results, the admission rolls etc.," he said, adding that the way UPTU officials ignored his mails could have been disastrous. TOI has the copy of emails and snapshots of the secure access area of UPTU.

When informed about the hacking, UPTU vice-chancellor Prof RK Khandal feigned ignorance and claimed he had not received any mail. The VC said he will direct the technical team to look into the matter. "I don't have any information about any hacking. If the hacker has access to the servers, I hope he doesn't use it for any malicious purpose. I want to meet him and thank him for finding the bug instead," said Khandal.

Rahul, along with two friends, Devjeet Singh and Akash Shukla, is member of the hall of fame of Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo! and other top companies for finding security bugs. "We have helped Microsoft, Yahoo!, Adobe, Nokia and other companies to find security bugs and received monetary award for the same," he shared.

He added that he is willing to help UPTU to secure its servers.