Reuters has temporarily removed the article “How an Indian startup hacked the world” to comply with a preliminary court order issued on Dec. 4, 2023, in a district court in New Delhi, India. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-hackers-appin/
An except recovered from https://web.archive.org/web/20231117025741/https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-hackers-appin/ :
"The Indian company hacked on an industrial scale, stealing data from political leaders, international executives, prominent attorneys and more. By the time of the Shinnecock scandal, Appin was a premier provider of cyberespionage services for private investigators working on behalf of big business, law firms and wealthy clients.
Unauthorized access to computer systems is a crime worldwide, including in India. Yet at least 17 pitch documents prepared for prospective business partners and reviewed by Reuters advertised Appin’s prowess in activities such as “cyber spying,” “email monitoring,” “cyber warfare” and “social engineering,” security lingo for manipulating people into revealing sensitive information. In one 2010 presentation, the company explicitly bragged about hacking businessmen on behalf of corporate clients.
Reuters previously named Appin in a story about Indian cyber mercenaries published last year. Other media outlets – including The New Yorker, Paris-based Intelligence Online, Swiss investigative program Rundschau and tech companies such as Alphabet-owned Google– have also reported on the firm’s activities.
This report paints the clearest picture yet of how Appin operated, detailing the world-spanning extent of its business, and international law enforcement’s abortive efforts to get a handle on it."
