Former NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan had, a month ago, revealed in a statement on Twitter that she was the target of a “sophisticated and coordinated phishing attack”.
The people behind the “phishing attack” had pulled off a hoax and led her to believe that Harvard University had offered her a job as “an Associate Professor teaching journalism as part of Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences”. However, it was later revealed that the university had made her no such offer.
“The perpetrators of this attack used clever forgeries and misrepresentations to obtain access to my personal data and communications and may have also gained access to my devices and my email/social media accounts”, Razdan had alleged.
According to Nidhi Razdan, she was invited in November 2019 to speak at an event by the Harvard Kennedy School, the public policy institute of Harvard University, and one of the alleged organisers separately told her of a teaching vacancy. Razdan submitted her CV and was even interviewed online by the ‘recruiters’ for 90 minutes.
Nidhi Razdan had corresponded with email addresses from the harvardcareer.com website. The website has links to a Chinese individual, and the web address was registered as recently as January 2020.
This is around the same time that Nidhi Razdan met with the alleged organiser.
The website is registered under the name of Guan Wang, a Chinese individual, who allegedly runs more than a hundred fraudulent websites.
Before Guan Wang, the harvardcareer.com website was registered to one Ron Elitzur, who has registered around 28 similar websites.
According to a news report, the Cyber Cell has completed its investigations into the scam. Two individuals, whose names have not yet been made public, are believed to be the masterminds of the scam and phishing attack. Investigators say that one of them is a Pakistani national, while the other is Chinese.
(Based on a report by Falana Dikhana)
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