From Musharraf to BMW’s Stefan Quandt, VIPs around the world are being targeted by hackers in India: Sunday Times reports | Tech Reddy

The Sunday Times reported that Indian hackers had “taken control of computers owned by Pakistani politicians, generals and diplomats and intercepted their private conversations”.

New Delhi: A sting operation conducted by the Sunday Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed that several Indian hackers are offering their services to hack private email accounts and messages of victims on behalf of authoritarian states, British lawyers and investigators working for their wealthy clients.

From Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf to BMW’s Stefan Quandt, no one is safe when it comes to cyber crime as hackers claim to have recovered the information of several VIPs worldwide.

The Sunday Times sends its journalists undercover in India as MI6 agents turned corporate investigators seek to recruit some of India’s top computer hackers to infiltrate the illegal hacking industry. A hacker claims to have used Pegasus, the Israeli software that sparked a political firestorm in India two years ago and prompted an SC probe into alleged surveillance.

Undercover reporters set up a bogus corporate investigation agency called Beaufort Intelligence in Mayfair, London. They then contacted some of India’s top accused hackers saying they wanted to get personal information to target their clients.

How Indians are earning thousands of dollars working for private investigators worldwide

In the sting operation, during a Zoom call, an Indian hacker named Utkarsh Bhargava claimed that he had been commissioned to break into the computer systems of various government ministries in Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Cambodia and Canada. “Our job was to get information and pass it on,” he told undercover reporters.

The Sunday Times reported that Indian hackers had “taken control of computers owned by Pakistani politicians, generals and diplomats and intercepted their private conversations”.

Due to huge demand, Indian hackers are earning thousands of dollars working for private investigators worldwide. Hackers think they can keep doing it because they won’t get caught because the cops in India have no idea how it works.

The Modus Operandi

Investigation revealed that the victims often befriended Indian hackers on social media and the hackers sent them something interesting to click on. When they click, they download malware to their computer and allow the hacker access to their email inbox.

The hacking gang, which operates under the name WhiteInt, is run from a fourth-floor apartment in a suburb of Gurugram, Haryana’s tech city. Its mastermind is a 31-year-old man – an occasional TV cyber security pundit who also holds down a day job at the Indian office of a British accountancy firm, the ‘Sunday Times’ reports.

The team also found a group of hackers operating as WhiteInt from an office in Gurgaon, identified as Aditya Jain, 31, a Deloitte employee who moonlights as a hacker. The Sunday Times Jain reported that he could gain access to anyone’s email inbox in the world within 30 days.

UK investigators have been able to commission “hack-for-hire” firms with less fear that they will face prosecution for breaking the country’s computer abuse laws.