Soon after Microsoft India's online store was hacked last week,
rumours swirled in Twitter that ethical
hacker Ankit Fadia had been
hired as a security consultant by the software giant. He denies these
rumours, calling them baseless.
Fadia feels that the hacking of the Microsoft website allegedly by a
China-based group is part of trend that is here to stay. "The hacking of
the Microsoft, CIA and the BSF websites happened within days of each
other. Such hacking incidents happen all the time. There is no use
overreacting as the hacking attacks will continue," says Fadia, also a
bestselling author blamed for extensive plagiarising.
The hacker group, calling itself the Evil Shadow Team, stole from the
Microsoft website usernames and passwords that it admittedly found
unencrypted. "No system in the world is secure. If the CIA cannot fully
protect its website, how can ordinary Indian companies. The firms
should, however, be more pro-active about their security."
Fadia recently released
How to Unblock Everything on the Internet,
a book that shows how to allow sites restricted at workplaces, colleges
or countries. "The book has been written for users who are not tech
savvy. The book is intended to be
easily understood and contains screenshots of 50 techniques for unblocking sites," he explains.
The author of over a dozen books has often been accused of plagiarism
and making tall claims. A security professional, who uses the handle
@FakeAnkitFadia on Twitter, told
The Sunday Guardian, "The first book that Fadia 'wrote' at the age of 14,
The Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking, was a little over 32% plagiarised from other security publications and websites."
The security professional also burns holes in Fadia's claims of being featured in
The New York Times Best
Sellers List. "I have not found any mention of him in the list going
back 50 years, either in the fiction or the non-fiction category." He
points out that Fadia's statement that his website on hacking was ranked
the second best in the world by the FBI is untrue, because the
investigative agency has no such system of ranking.
The security professional says that he has been attending Black Hat
and Defcon, the largest hacker conferences in the world, for the past 10
years but claims to have never seen Fadia attending them.
Blogger Sandip Dev lists reasons for Fadia being famous, despite his
tarnished image. "The masses see computer security as some sort of dark
magic whereas it is a systematic process, a science. Hence, these people
can be easily fooled by the likes of Fadia. The other aspect is
obviously shoddy journalism. Papers print whatever catches the readers'
attention. A child prodigy in computers does just that and our 'idol
crazy' nation laps it up."
A Facebook page, called We Hate Ankit Fadia, contains some scathing
attacks on the celebrity author. "A Hacker should be a tool. Tools do
not make anyone a hacker," says a comment, in reference to Fadia's
books that teach hacking. "He is nothing but just a person with very
good luck," says another comment.
Mohit Agarwal, who is associated with the Facebook page, cites at
least six instances, twice of them this year, when Fadia's own website
was hacked. "Fadia has spent his entire career talking about hacking and
security, but has not performed penetration testing, has not secured
networks and only offered pedestrian 'hacking' training re-branded as a
certification bearing his own name," Agarwal says, referring to courses
that Fadia runs in association with Reliance. "Just because he knows how
to Google, he cannot be a hacker. He is a fake."
Courtesy : The Sunday Guardian
.jpg)
