LAHORE - The Safe City Project, which has been designed to make the city crime free, itself fell prey to criminals.

Hikvision, a Chinese manufacturer and supplier of video surveillance products that is engaged in the Punjab Safe City Project, has complained to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) about hacking of its email account. Company’s Regional Director Mr Mao has said in his application to police that Junaid, one of his former employees, was engaged in defaming his company.

The company was working on some 8,000 surveillance cameras, costing Rs12 billion, to watch the city under the phased Punjab Safe City Project. The project was inaugurated last year by Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

The application says, “We have experienced that someone misused our HIKVISION email domain (Hikvision.com) and damaged our good reputation in the market by spamming information and confidential data of our partners and client. Not only this, but also tried to act as Hikvision employee for endorsement of the information spread through these spam emails.”

Mr Mao claimed in his application that during their internal investigation they found that two emails of their employees were hacked, including Ali.shah@Hikvision.com and Hamayun.sahi@hikvision.com from September 19 to September 21. Stolen and downloaded information of contacts, confidential data and price lists were shared to our valuable partners, government organisation and media groups by using emails like Khan@hikvision.com (Qatar) and Aral.Uzun@hikvision.com (Turkey).

The regional manager expressed doubt in his application that this information could be leaked or shared by one of ex-employees Junaid, who lives in Karachi. He said that Junaid was involved in fraud in the company.

Mr Mao said that hacking caused heavy losses and damage to the company. The FIA, after receiving the application, started investigation into it.