Newsmaker: Ankit Fadia

The ethical hacker as you know him

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The career of Ankit Fadia, self-proclaimed ethical hacker, bears testimony to the fact that smart self-promotion can accomplish astonishing things. The 30-year-old has now reportedly been appointed brand ambassador for the Digital India campaign.

This recognition comes even as Fadia has been accused multiple times of making unverifiable claims about his skills and his exploits in cyberspace.

There have been multiple articles in the Indian press enumerating all those accusations and allegations. But despite this, Fadia has built a lucrative career in IT security. He offers an "ethical hacker certification" to people who sign up for his courses (Rs 10,000 plus taxes for 42 hours of online lectures), and he claims to have certified over 20,000 people. He is said to charge speaking fees of around $25,000. The content of many of those lectures have been placed online at his YouTube channel, and the talks mainly consist of well-known tricks and tips, widely available on the net.

On his website, www.ankitfadia.in , Fadia claims, "(He is) widely recognised as a computer security expert, he has published 16 books, delivered more than 1,000 talks in 25 countries, received several awards and trained more than 20,000 people in India and China. He has a Bachelor's degree in management science & engineering from Stanford University and was chosen as a 'global shaper' by the World Economic Forum."

Fadia has earlier made claims about passing the 25 million mark in book sales. His first book was written when he was 14 years old. Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking was published in 2001, and it has supposedly sold over 3 million copies.

After 9/11, the 16-year-old Fadia claimed to have been hired in November 2001 by "an intelligence agency from the US" to decipher encoded emails by Al Qaeda. He also says he was consulted by the Central Bureau of Investigation in a cybercrime case. Those claims remain unverified. But then, intelligence agencies and police forces are not in the business of certifying security consultants.

Fadia also claims to have hacked several Indian government websites as a teenager and says he also hacked the site of CHIP magazine, a claim denied by its current and former editors.

Ironically, Fadia's own site has been hacked at least nine times, including once by a Pakistani hacker collective, which left insulting messages. On at least two occasions, the website was taken over by spammers selling Viagra. That adds a special note of poignancy to his (admittedly lighthearted) claim that watching his YouTube videos help people "get laid". In 2012, DEFCON, the largest annual global hacking conference, mockingly named Fadia the "Security Charlatan of the Year." So that is Ankit Fadia - one of the ambassadors of Digital India.