“Hack-for-hire” companies, also known as illegal hacking operatives, are active all throughout India. According to an undercover investigation on Sunday, they learn hacking into VIPs’ and governments’ phones and emails for money paid by private investigators all around the world.
An Indian hacker who claims to have gained access to more than 500 email accounts, largely on behalf of his business intelligence customers, stated that “the British and the whole world … are using Indian hackers.” He claims to be a participant in the booming global cybercrime market that steals individuals’ secrets.
As per the string operation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and “The Sunday Times”, the best hacker in India is providing their services to investigators working for autocratic states, British lawyers, and their rich clients to access victims’ private email accounts and messages. According to the research, these criminal “hack-for-hire” gangs hack into VIPs’ emails and phones all around the world.
What the Hackers Claim:
Hackers have claimed to have retrieved data on a number of VIPs throughout the world, including BMW’s Stefan Quandt and the former president of Pakistan, Parvez Musharraf.
According to the investigation based on leaked documents and undercover work in India earlier this year, journalists posing as former MI6 agents turned private investigators claim that one gang “seized control of computers” owned by Pakistan’s politicians, generals and diplomats and eavesdropped on their private conversations “apparently at the behest of the Indian secret services”.
According to the survey of the hacking news, the majority of hackers working in this industry began their careers as certified ethical hackers after ethical hacking training. One hacker whom the undercover journalists spoke to asserted that computer “offensive work” (the word used for hacking) was far better paid than “defensive work” protecting systems. Before posting a tempting link, Indian hackers would frequently become friends with their targets on social media. They unintentionally let the hacker access their inboxes by doing by downloading malware onto their machines.
He claims that in addition to other places, he has worked with customers in New Jersey, Belgium, Canada, and Hong Kong. The hacker claims that “he charged between $3,000 to $20,000 for each email account he hacked and had established corporate intelligence clients in North America, Hong Kong, Romania, Belgium and Switzerland.”
What’s the Report Says:
It has also been reported that they hire a hacker to hack accounts of “critics of Qatar who threatened to expose wrongdoing by the Gulf state in the run-up to this month’s World Cup”. According to reports, the group of hackers in India responsible for the attacks on Qatar goes by the moniker WhiteInt in Gurugram.
In a fourth-floor apartment in a residential district of Gurugram, a powerhouse of technology in the Indian state of Haryana, the WhiteInt ethical hacking certification training organisation has its headquarters. According to the “Sunday Times,” the strategy was developed and carried out by a 31-year-old man who occasionally consults as a cybersecurity expert on television on behalf of a British accountancy firm operating in India.
The team also came across WhiteInt, a group of certified ethical hacker course completing hackers operating out of Gurgaon and directed by 31-year-old Aditya Jain, a hacker after pursuing the best ethical hacking course who works part-time for Deloitte. The Sunday Times said that Jain asserted he could access anyone’s inbox anywhere in the globe in less than 30 days. “I offer access to closed source information of email and computers of the PoI [person of interest] anywhere across the globe… an average timeline is around 20 to 30 days,” he was quoted as telling the undercover journalists.
Conclusion:
In addition to this, the inquiry finds that Chris Mason, the political editor for the BBC, was also a target. Other targets included the Swiss president and his deputy, a British-based oligarch who was trying to escape Vladimir Putin, Michel Platini, the former president of European football, Formula One racing executives Ruth Buscombe of the Alfa Romeo team and Otmar Szafnauer, chief executive of the Aston Martin team, as well as a number of computers belonging to Pakistani politicians, generals, and diplomats.
For British investigators who hired “hack-for-hire” businesses to help them break the nation’s computer misuse laws, there have been little to no consequences.
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