

Rahul Tyagi: Jericho Emails - m4k
http://attrition.org/errata/plagiarism/rahul_tyagi/emails.html

======
sidmitra
I'm actually more embarrassed about the level of English this guys uses.
Majority of the school education here is in English, atleast in the cities.
All of engineering/technical education in India is in English. I can expect
the odd mistakes since it's not our first language, and the accent being a
problem. But to be considered an expert in the field, i would imagine you
should have a firm grasp on the language you use to impart unambiguous, highly
technical knowledge.

~~~
delinka
Why do that when it's easier to plagiarize good English from elsewhere?

What I mean is it's a typical scam artist, too lazy to do anything but take
from others.

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xfax
From Ankit Fadia's About Me page
(<http://www.ankitfadia.in/aboutankitfadia.html>):

    
    
      In November 2001, Fadia was consulted by a classified       intelligence agency for breaking an encrypted message sent   by one of Osama Bin Laden's men. Since then Fadia has been involved in numerous classified projects pertaining to cyber terrorism and crime. In August 2008, Fadia was consulted by the Navi Mumbai Police Department to trace the terror email sent just a few minutes before the Gujarat serial blasts. Fadia was also consulted by the Mumbai Police for decoding VOIP messages in relation to the Mumbai terror attacks.
    

If this is the state of affairs at the Indian intelligence agencies, perhaps
they shouldn't even bother.

~~~
Auguste
Attrition.org has more details on this claim here:
[http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ankit_fadia/fadia13.ht...](http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ankit_fadia/fadia13.html)

 _"Are we really to believe the U.S. National Security Agency went to a 16
year-old foreign national in India with no published research on encryption to
enlist his help decrypting stegonography-hidden messages that used three
customized encryption algorithms using just his desktop computer? Absolutely
not."_

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simias
Who are those people? Why is there a smiley in the title? Why is this on the
frontpage? I feel I lack some context here.

~~~
Auguste
There isn't a lot of context, but the tl;dr is that Attrition.org keeps track
of charlatans and plagiarists in the security industry, and Rahul Tyagi is
allegedly one of them.

* <http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/>

* <http://attrition.org/errata/plagiarism/>

------
xfax
Just did a bit of Googling on Ankit Fadia and Rahul Tyagi.

Damn, are these guys really delusional or are they just good at selling
themselves? Not that the Indian media helps - they are incredible at chest-
thumping at the most mediocre things.

------
m4k
Its shameful that people like Rahul Tyagi and Ankit Fadia making fool to many
organisation and students in India by showing kiddy tricks. Most surprising
part is Ankit is getting business and he is teaching Hacking in some of the
university in India.

~~~
fredoliveira
When I was working for box.sk (so many years ago) a much younger Ankit
submitted several articles to neworder.box.sk. Most of them were lifted
verbatim from TCP IP Illustrated. He was exposed back then by our staff, but
had a huge following of people who believed it really was his original
material - people for whom it was easier to parse random internet articles
than pick up a volume like TCP/IP Illustrated. The (now a) man has made a life
for himself doing this kind of thing.

There's always going to be people like Fadia, and this Rahul. And sadly,
there's always going to be people who believe these folks.

~~~
pm90
This is the way things work in India, unfortunately. People are a bit
gullible, and don't bother to do a bit of research. For example, when I was in
High School, I noticed that nearly all my classmates used Indian ripoffs of
classic science books published in the West, instead of using the original.
After a bit of digging, I figured the reason was that these ripoffs explained
'concepts' in an 'organised' manner which could then be _memorized_

------
jasdeepnarang
I can point out about 100 more people who are like Rahul and Ankit... :)

You should definitely check out the mockery coming out of
<http://www.defconpunjab.com/>

~~~
phatbyte
<http://www.defconpunjab.com/team.html> it really feels like a bad movie cast

~~~
Pwntastic
Are they seriously using one of the official Battlefield 3 wallpapers as their
background?

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Robin_Message
I love the sentence _"i did not cross check from net that whether the content
was plagiarized or not"_. Well, no, the content on the net is not plagiarized
– the plagiarism is in copy-pasting it.

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nsns
The strange fact is that Tyagi isn't offended by anything said about his book,
he simply plays for time until he receives assurance that his book (and email
conversation!) will be featured on Attrition... He will probably add a link
saying, "Featured on Attrition!" hoping none of his clients bothers to read
it.

~~~
SudarshanP
Does he(Tyagi) get pagerank for this chaos ;-) At least a few guys will link
to his site without a rel=nofollow ;-)

------
phatbyte
I couldn't resist, his website is amazingly funny too
<http://rahultyagi.net/Home.html>

~~~
yogeshkhatri
and try to click in the submenu that appears on hovering on "Talk to Me". Its
tricky.

~~~
pawelwentpawel
Tricky it is indeed. I've opened his twitter profile and apparently he is an
_Actor, Author, Ethical Hacker, Hardcore Gamer, Motivational Speaker_ and has
37k followers.

------
Achshar
I am an Indian and i don't think they are any kind of whizkid. They are just
good at selling themselves to media and today's generation who happen to think
they are computer geniuses. Youth here thinks they are huge deal (i have
myself heard about Ankit Fadia a number of times in the wild, always in the
context "computer problem? contact Ankit Fadia"). I respect their interest in
computers but i blame these men completely for their delusional behavior.
Either that or they are hired by some more, uhm, typical hackers to cover for
their public image. But i don't think my country's intelligence is this
sophisticated because as Ankit Fadia's about me page states, our defense
people think decrypting emails is the job of a hacker. God forbid they find
out stuxnet or Flame and who their makers are. India has technical talent, but
other people here tend to overshadow the small intelligent discussions one can
expect.

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FlyingSnake
These guys are snake oil salesmen and they fool unsuspecting students and
institutes and profit by their naivete.

The crap they sell under the name of 'Hacking' is absolutely pathetic and at
best they succeed in creating script kiddies.

This is not HN worthy, but tangentially all the HNers subconsciously despise
idiots like these.

------
karolist
The level of stupidity is really high in the linked conversation.

Seems like this industry is getting overrun by amateurs or simply fakes. My
employer paid for CEH course at EC <http://www.eccouncil.org/>

The material was simple, inaccurate and outdated, aimed at creating script
kiddies at best. And yet organisations happily pay thousands of dollars/pounds
for this nonsense.

I think anon poster [1] at Quora summarized the course well.

"CEH is crap, don't bother and if you take the CEH cert, never tell anybody,
they will laugh at you. It's like telling a trucker that you have a license to
drive a moped"

1\. [http://www.quora.com/Is-ECC-Council-Ethical-Hacker-
Certifica...](http://www.quora.com/Is-ECC-Council-Ethical-Hacker-
Certification-CEH-worth-it)

------
aviraldg
People like this give us Indians a bad name. A (non-technical) friend recently
showed me a copy of Ankit Fadia's "email hacking book" and I was shocked to
see the quality of material and the things he called "hacking" in that book
(connecting to a SMTP server and sending an email with modified headers.)
These people need to be exposed for the frauds that they really are.

The media doesn't help in all this either. Reporters, even on technical
stories have absolutely no idea what they're writing about, leading to stories
like Ankit Fadia and his supposed decryption of messages from Osama Bin-laden.

~~~
sdiwakar
I agree, there are hundreds of guys in India that are doing a great job
advancing the stated of the art - and you'll never hear a peep from any of
them.

Ankit and Rahul are just good at talking themselves up. There are plenty of
people in InfoSec that excel at marketing themselves.

Worst of all, they are an embarrassment to the intelligence agencies they have
purportedly worked for.

I have no doubt in my mind that a graduate beginning her infosec career at the
NSA, DSD, GCHQ, RAW, Mossad or other intelligence agency would show a better
understanding of fundamental security concepts than these fuddiduddies.

------
bardoloi
Plagiarism is a common occurrence in India. There is very little original
research work in universities and Intellectual Property laws are rarely
enforced. Ergo, every two-bit college professor regularly "authors" books to
supplement their paltry income. These are mostly marketed to their own
students as a way to pass exams, and nobody claims to have done the original
research. Guys like Rahul Tyagi and Ankit Fadia just had the chutzpah to
believe their own hype. The real worrisome fact is that nobody in Corporate
India knows enough about security to call out these charlatans.

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pulkit
that guy jerico has patience!

~~~
peterwwillis
And a ton of free time, apparently.

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nsns
There isn't exactly a dearth of charlatans in the world. What is striking
about this guy is he seems to be completely unaware of being one.

------
manojlds
Question - why don't some of the real hackers take down the sites of these
kidies and do the world a service?

~~~
Achshar
Because no one visits their sites in the first place? (With the exception of
people who want to make fun of them)

------
tzaman
What I find most amusing is that many of these self-proclaimed
hackers/developers don't _get it_. You can ask the same question all over
again for days only to get off-topic replies. Sadly, most of the ones I dealt
with are also based in India.

~~~
Achshar
I don't claim to be a "hacker" but would just like to say that there are smart
people here. They are not just as vocal as these people who, as others have
said in this thread, are good at selling themselves to the media.

------
landhar
Anyone has the link to the article jericho promised to write ?

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vkkan
more funny thing was at this page <http://rahultyagi.net/About%20me.html>

~~~
robgolding
In few years he bang the world wide web with good computer ethical hacking
articles!

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vkkan
real funny conversation and still people tap information from various websites
but not even giving credit to rightful owners , its shame

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dev_Gabriel
I want this book so hard! (not)

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farico
this made my day, the conversation is so fun :D

