“Private parties are also hiring hackers en masse.” Abroad

An Indian IT company has spent years trying to penetrate email accounts on behalf of customers. BellTroX InfoTech Services from Delhi is said to have sent tens of thousands of messages between 2013 and 2020 to steal their passwords under false pretenses.

The company sought to access the mail accounts of organizations and government officials around the world. These included judges in South Africa, Mexican politicians, French lawyers and environmental organizations in the United States.

Reuters news agency got into the case after researchers at Citizen Lab (University of Toronto) spent more than two years researching BellTroX.

According to the university researchers, it is particularly striking that a large number of environmental organizations have been targeted. They were all associated with the # ExxonKnew campaign, which claims that the company ExxonMobil had known about climate change for years, Citizen Lab said.

Porn sites

Insiders say that US authorities have already opened an investigation into the company’s activities that were directed against US targets. Owner Sumit Gupta denies that he did anything criminal. He does not want to say who his clients are.

BellTroX tried to steal passwords in many ways, according to Reuters. Employees imitated the targets or colleagues of their targets in messages. They also sometimes received fake requests to log in to Facebook or to unsubscribe from pornographic sites.

Espionage against payment

Experts say groups of “cyber mercenaries” such as BellTroX are hired on a regular basis, but receive far less attention than hackers working for governments. “This is one of the largest espionage-for-payment operations ever revealed,” said a researcher from Citizen Lab.

Two former employees say that BellTroX and similar organizations are often engaged by people who want to spy on business rivals or political opponents. It is unclear how often the espionage attempts were successful.

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