Appin (company)

Last updated
Appin
Industry Computer security
Founded2003
Founder
  • Rajat Khare
  • Anuj Khare
Headquarters
New Delhi
,
India
Services
Website Official website

Appin was an Indian cyberespionage company founded in 2003 by brothers Rajat and Anuj Khare. It initially started as a cybersecurity training firm, but by 2010 the company had begun providing hacking services for governments and corporate clients that "stole secrets from executives, politicians, military officials and wealthy elites around the globe." Their hacking exploits and Rajat Khare's unprecedented efforts to suppress reporting have been covered by major outlets like Reuters, The New Yorker, Wired, SRF Investigativ, Intelligence Online, and many others. [1] They created the model that is still used by the Indian hack-for-hire industry. [2] [3]

Contents

The company offered what its founders referred to as "ethical hacking" services, capable of breaking into and stealing sensitive information from anyone's computer. [4] [5] [6] [7] Since at least 2010, they have targeted victims globally with hacking and phishing attacks for espionage and information theft. [8] [9] [3] They have been on the radar of by U.S. intelligence since 2009, when the NSA began surveillance after observing them hack high-value Pakistani officials. [2]

In 2010, Rajat Khare sent bulk emails to private intelligence firms across Europe offering hacking-for-hire services. [4] [6] [7] Starting on January 5, 2012, a cyberattack targeted Peter Hargitay, a Zurich-based FIFA insider and consultant for Australia's 2022 World Cup bid. Hargitay and his son hired an expert who traced the hack to a server linked to Rajat Khare. The attack was part of an extensive hacking operation targeting numerous individuals for smear campaigns. This was tied to Qatar's web of espionage to secure the 2022 FIFA World Cup hosting rights. [2] [10] [11] That same year, an Indian cybersecurity consultant traced an attempted hack on a client to Appin and discovered compromising material on its servers. [12] In February 2013, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization regarding a phishing attack that used a suspicious domain to steal investment information. [13] [9] [14] In March of that year, after Telenor filed a criminal case with Norwegian police Kripos over a hack stealing 66,000 emails from its leadership and legal advisor, the infosec community obtained evidence that allowed them to access Appin's unsecured servers and link the group to several high-profile cyberattacks. [8] [15] [16] [17] Notably, Norman Shark publicly linked the Telenor hack to Appin. [18] [19] [2]

Appin's industrial-scale random attacks drew global attention, [10] and by 2013, they had become well-known among security researchers, who referred to them using various monikers to describe their pattern of activity, including Operation Hangover by Shadowserver Foundation and Norman Shark, [20] [18] [21] Monsoon by Forcepoint, [22] and Viceroy Tiger by CrowdStrike. [23] [24] [25] From 2013 onward, Google spent a decade monitoring Appin-linked hackers who targeted tens of thousands of email accounts on its platform. [26] [27] Due to the high volume worked by the hackers, Google had to expand its systems and procedures to keep up with them. Security researchers have been cautious in their public statements linking Appin to the hacking and phishing incidents to avoid legal trouble; however, privately, they remain confident in the connection. [2]

Since 2012, Appin and its CEO Rajat Khare have been under criminal investigations in multiple countries. In the Dominican Republic, authorities raided a local newspaper publisher in 2012 and formally accused him of collaborating with Khare to hack emails, spy on the nation's elite, and extract information for his digital newspaper. [2] [28] [29] The publisher later admitted that in 2011, he paid Appin between $5,000 and $10,000 a month to spy on over 200 prominent Dominicans, including then-President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández. In the U.S., after analyzing a 2012 hack and leak targeting a Native American tribe [30] , the FBI linked multiple cases to a single perpetrator. Collaborating with Swiss authorities, the FBI identified the perpetrator as Appin and shared that they had human intelligence through a confidential source. Rajat Khare's communications and activities were also tracked by the FBI. Later, in mid-2020, the private detective who had contracted Appin for hacking the Native American tribe confessed in an affidavit. [31] Similarly, an Israeli private investigator who hired Appin to hack at least three dozen people admitted to employing them to steal emails from a Korean businessman. [3] [32] [33] Meanwhile, Norwegian investigators had connected Appin to the Telenor hack, while Swiss authorities had also linked Appin and Rajat Khare to a criminal complaint filed by the Hargitays for intrusion into their systems. In 2021, the State Bank of India filed a criminal complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation, Appin's former client, accusing Rajat Khare and others of embezzling ₹8.06 billion ($97 million) from loans to Educomp, where Khare was a director. [34] [35] [2]

Starting in or around 2011, the mercenaries operated a digital dashboard dubbed "My Commando" for spy services, resembling an e-commerce platform with a menu of hacking options. Customers logged in to request Appin to hack emails, computers, or phones, track the operation's progress like a delivery, and later download stolen data from digital dead drops. [2] A year later, various reports from media outlets, research organizations, and multinational corporations began linking Appin to hacking incidents targeting prominent figures, including Boris Berezovsky and Mohamed Azmin Ali. Less well-known individuals, such as a landscape architect in New Jersey and several lawyers, were also targeted. In 2012, a German private investigator paid Appin $3,000 to hack an email during an inheritance feud involving a wealthy businessman. [3] Such attacks extended to the families of U.S. government officials, including the wife of Representative Mike Rogers, who was the Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee at the time. Also among the victims were human rights activists, such as those associated with the Oslo Freedom Forum, along with governmental and private organizations. [36] [4] [37] [38]

Following Norman Shark's public attribution of the Telenor hack to Appin, [18] the group began scaling back its online presence. Around that time, two companies founded by former Appin employees—BellTroX InfoTech Services [39] led by Sumit Gupta and CyberRoot Risk Advisory [40] [41] [42] —started collaborating with Appin, sharing staff and computer infrastructure for their hack-for-hire operations. [3] The hacking operations were identified using a database of over 80,000 phishing emails sent to 13,000 targets from 2013 to 2020. This database was independently vetted by six expert groups, including Scylla Intel, BAE, Mandiant, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Google—with each group independently confirming recognized hacking activity. Further analysis by Mandiant, LinkedIn, Google, [26] and court records [43] revealed that the hacking was carried out by three Appin-linked companies with an intermingling of resources among them. Together, they built a network of mercenary Indian hacking companies, charging clients anywhere from a few thousand to millions of dollars [40] [44] while paying workers just $370 per month. [45] Operating from a modest, CCTV-monitored facility, the hackers targeted attorneys and their clients—including companies, advocacy groups, media organizations, and business executives—seeking to undermine the legal process. Notably, Appin alumnus Sumit Gupta's involvement in criminal cases, [46] [47] [48] [49] his ties with former Israeli policeman Aviram Azari, [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] and his role in the wider network of Indian hackers have been the subject of several media articles. [3] [56] [4] [57] [58] [59]

Appin Technology rebranded multiple times before adopting the name Sunkissed Organic Farms in 2017. Its subsidiary, Appin Software Security—which performed hacking and phishing operations—became Adaptive Control Security Global Corporate (ACSG) in 2015. Rajat Khare resigned as director of Appin Technology in 2016 and now resides in Switzerland. After the Swiss criminal investigation into his hacking of the Hargitays was closed, in the fall of 2020, Khare purchased a villa in Switzerland for 13.5 million Swiss francs from the daughter of a Ukrainian oligarch. He now portrays himself as a renowned start-up investor. [10] In September 2023, The Economic Times reported that Rajat and Shweta Khare had purchased a plot in Delhi for ₹760 million (about $9.1 million). Together, they run Boundary Holding, a Luxembourg-based venture capital firm. [60] Rajat Khare's family still controls the renamed Indian companies, including ACSG, which officially claims to do confidential computer security work for governments. [2] [61] [62]

History

In December 2003, Rajat Khare along with high school friends conceived Appin to offer technology training workshops to university students. By 2005, now joined by Anuj, an entreprenuer and former motivational speaker, the company had an office in western New Delhi. Appin began as a digital security consultancy that provided cybersecurity classes to help Indian organizations defend themselves online. This drew the attention of Indian government officials, who were navigating internet-era intelligence challenges and seeking ways to hack into computers and emails.

Shortly thereafter, Appin established a subsidiary to conduct surveillance activities for the Indian government. Employees signed non-disclosure agreements and were assigned to military-controlled facilities, where they worked away from their colleagues in the wider company. Their targets included Pakistan, China, and Khalistani separatists from India's Punjab state.

By 2009, the company's clients had included the Indian Armed Forces, the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the Central Bureau of Investigation. Appin claimed their solutions were used by government intelligence agencies to monitor hostile individuals, marketed software for analyzing call metadata, and explored importing Israeli cell phone interception devices. For the fiscal year ending in 2009, the company earned nearly $1 million in revenue and a profit of about $170,000, with a projected tenfold increase in revenue over the next 36 months. [63] [64]

The company also made extra money by discreetly reselling material it had hacked for one Indian agency to another. This practice of double-dipping was eventually uncovered, prompting several outraged Indian intelligence agencies to terminate their contracts with Appin. Facing dwindling opportunities in intelligence work, Appin shifted its focus to hacking and phishing for the private sector. [2]

Controversies

Appin and co-founder Rajat Khare have systematically pressured news sources in multiple countries, including France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and India, to remove references in articles to the company and Khare. [65] [66] [67] [1]

On November 2, 2022, Swiss media outlet SRF Investigativ published an investigative piece about Qatar's elaborate and extensive espionage operation aimed at securing its hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The operation, which was dubbed Project Merciless, involved hacking emails and phones of FIFA officials and critics of Qatar's corruption and poor human rights record. It also targeted their friends and family members to run smear campaigns and influence FIFA policy. [10] [11] In November 2022, a lower court in Geneva ordered the publication to provisionally remove Rajat Khare's name and photo from the article. When contacted by RSF, Khare's Swiss lawyer, Nicolas Capt, stated that Khare has taken civil and criminal action in Switzerland and other countries to protect his honor. [1]

On June 1, 2023, The New Yorker published an article titled, "A Confession Exposes India's Secret Hacking Industry." The article primarily focused on firms founded by Appin alumni, such as BellTroX Infotech Services and CyberRoot Risk Advisory, which have targeted climate activists, investors, lawsuit defendants, and organizations on a global scale and still remain operational. Appin first sued the U.S. magazine in India, and later, Rajat Khare filed a lawsuit against it in Switzerland. The New Yorker refused to take down their article, stating that they fully stand behind the piece, which is an accurate and fair account of a matter of legitimate public interest. They further stated that they will continue to defend the right to publish important reporting without fear or favor. [4] [1] [68]

On November 16, 2023, Reuters published an explosive article about the company and its cofounder Rajat Khare titled, "How an Indian Startup Hacked the World." Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of vetted documents, Reuters found that Appin "grew from an educational startup to a hack-for-hire powerhouse that stole secrets from executives, politicians, military officials and wealthy elites around the globe." The report was based on Appin's activities for nearly two decades, including company records, law enforcement files, and input from former employees, clients, and security professionals. The raw material spanning 2005 to 2022 was authenticated by Reuters and further verified by U.S. cybersecurity firm SentinelOne. [2] [1] [69]

Appin sued Reuters, claiming the news agency had engaged in a "defamatory campaign." [70] [5] It obtained an injunction from a Delhi court and, on December 4, 2023, Reuters temporarily removed its article. Reuters said that it stood by its reporting. [71] [5] [72] An archived version of the Reuters article hosted on the Wayback Machine was likewise removed following demands from lawyers representing Appin co-founder Rajat Khare. [73] Appin further sent demands to Meta Platforms, LinkedIn and Naukri.com to block accounts associated with the authors of the Reuters story. [67]

In February 2024, Wired reported that lawyers for Appin and a related entity called the Association for Appin Training Centers have filed lawsuits and made legal threats against more than a dozen news organizations. Appin sent emails demanding news site Techdirt and the organization MuckRock which hosted some of the information Reuters relied on. The two sites denied that the injunction was binding on them. [74] [66] [75] Other sites, such as the Lawfare blog, removed material based on the Reuters article. [5] [74] The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that they responded on behalf of Techdirt and MuckRock to legal threats made by Appin Training Centers. One of the arguments the EFF made in their letter to Appin is that the Indian court's order is unenforceable in U.S. courts because it conflicts with the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230), as reinforced by the SPEECH Act (28 U.S.C. § 4102). The EFF also urged recipients of Indian gag orders to carefully evaluate their legitimacy. [76] [66] [75]

The Reuters article was restored in October 2024, after the Delhi court rescinded its injunction on October 3, 2024, noting "the plaintiff has not been able to show any prima facie case to make interference in the process of journalism". [77] [78] The article is back online at its original location. [36]

On November 21, 2024, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reported that works from at least 15 different media outlets had been modified or withdrawn as a result of a strategic lawsuit against public participation or a notice from Rajat Khare or Appin Training Centers, while posts praising Khare on self-published sites flooded the internet. Additionally, an Intelligence Online article was the subject of an abusive Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request. [1] [79] [80]

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