It began with a single password: admin123.

What should have been a harmless factory-set login at Rajkot’s Payal Maternity Hospital turned into the entry point for one of India’s most disturbing cyber scandals. Within months, hackers had broken into CCTV dashboards across hospitals, homes, schools and offices, silently recording private moments and selling them online.

The fallout was staggering: According to a Times of India report, over 50,000 intimate clips stolen and traded on international porn fetish networks, exposing massive security lapses in India’s digital infrastructure.

The digital trail: January to December 2024

Investigators told TOI that the breach at Payal Hospital wasn’t an isolated case. Access logs show that the hackers operated unchecked for nearly a year, from Janu

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