India’s growing tribe of darknet hackers are minting bitcoins from assignments such as breaking into email accounts or electronic spying
Bengaluru: Joy D’Souza is a 20-yearold computer science student, freelance website designer and a darknet hacker. Which is to say he operates in an alternative Internet universe where most things are illegal and not easily accessible to commoners. He belongs to a small but growing tribe in India that earns handsome sums from assignments such as breaking into email or Facebook accounts or electronically spying on a rival, somewhat similar to regular black hat or illegal hackers. Several of them are engineering or computer science students or young professionals with day jobs, confident that the encrypted world they operate in won’t give them away.
D’Souza boasts of having hacked into a politician’s computer. “I got paid around 0.20 bitcoins (about $800) for the task,” said D’Souza, using a pseudonym as did the other half a dozen hackers that ET spoke with for this report. “The pricing varies on the level of difficulty and urgency.” The darknet can be accessed by software known as TOR to browse hidden websites anonymously as well as gain access to both legal and illegal services from hackers, among other activities. The TOR network is a group of volunteeroperated servers that allows people to improve their privacy and security on the Internet by separating identification and routing. “You usually have no clue who your hacker is unless you become a regular client and form some kind of trust, but usually we trust no one,” said Rahul Panwar, a 28-year-old darknet hacker with a day job as a consultant for one of India’s largest technology companies.
For simple tasks such as hacking email and Facebook accounts, the hackers charge $100-250 in bitcoins.
For more complicated assignments such as spying into someone’s computer, the rate is $600-700, or upwards if the individual to be spied on is highprofile. For hacking a webserver, the price is about $1,000 in bitcoins.
“And for a targeted attack on a specific user or company, a hacker could charge around $2,000 in bitcoins,” said Sheena Seth, a 35-year- old hacker employed with a startup as a software engineer.
Several of the assignments are born out of personal grudges and emotional distress, seeking in the hackers a last resort. Seema Singh (name changed), a 27-year-old engineer with a Bengaluru startup and a victim of revenge porn, reached out to a darknet hacker to get even with her former lover.
Also approved was a resolution raising the minimum board strength to five from three while the maximum remains at 15. Other resolutions passed include approval to raise as much as .₹ 45,000 crore through non-convertible debentures (NCDs) and the appointment of a chief financial officer. The Tata Trusts, a group of charitable organisations headed by chairman emeritus Ratan Tata, own 66% of Tata Sons, while the Mistry family firms own about 18.4%. The rest is held by Tata group companies and some Tata family members. The Tata Trusts were backed by the family members, including Noel Tata and his mother Simone Tata. Noel Tata, incidentally, is Cyrus Mistry’s brother-in-law. Mistry stayed away from the AGM, but sent two proxies, who opposed most of the resolutions barring those on dividends and the appointment of auditors. “We opposed the ones we thought were not in the interest of minority shareholders,” said a source close to Mistry.
Noel Tata and his children are associated with the Tata operating companies and the support was on expected lines. On the last occasion, the Minoo Tata group had abstained from voting. This time, they gave proxies in favour of the Tata Sons management. Thursday’s Tata Sons annual general meeting was the first under the chairmanship of N Chandrasekaran, who was appointed in February. Mistry has been opposed to Tata Sons becoming a private limited company from a public one, arguing that the move will restrict his family’s rights to transfer or sell shares. Under the Companies Act, 2013, shares of a public limited company are freely transferrable unlike those of private ones, which need board approval before change of hands. The former Tata Sons chairman had even written to the boards of group companies such as Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Steel, Tata Chemicals, Tata Global Beverages and Indian Hotels that own shares in the holding company in a bid to persuade them to vote against the proposals.
Tata Sons was incorporated as a private limited company on November 8, 1917, under the Indian Companies Act 1913. Mistry’s family first invested in Tata Sons in 1965. It became a deemed public company with effect from May 1, 1975, because of a change in the Companies Act. Since the Companies Act, 2013, came into effect, Tata Sons had the option to become a private limited company again.
Incidentally, the Shapoorji Pallonji group had also converted two companies — United Motors and SP Finance — from public limited to private. But people close to Mistry said this wasn’t comparable.
“Tata Sons is the largest holding company in India with many operating companies controlled by it,” said one of them. United Motors is over 90% owned by the family and is only a property holding company and SP Finance is a small, internal, nonbanking finance company fully owned by the group, the person said.
Some corporate governance experts said the proposal to become a private limited company is not oppression of minority shareholders as alleged by Mistry. JN Gupta, managing director of Stakeholders Empowerment Services (SES), a proxy advisory firm, said Tata Sons articles of association already restricted the free transfer of shares, which overrides the rules of the Companies Act pertaining to a public limited company. any
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