Story

The only words that came out of my dad’s mouth when he first heard about my choice of profession were,"Don’t call me when the Police pick you up at 2:00 AM. After all everybody know it’s a crime.”



Hi, I am an Ethical Hacker, in layman terms, though I prefer to call my self Security Evangelist. The passion that took off while in school to acquire the best of software ended up in me being a hacker. People often ask me “how do you think a ‘hacker’ can ever be ethical?” I tell them, hackers are always ethical, the unethical guys are ‘crackers’. I hack to protect.

In short in our security community we believe that the only way to stop a hacker is to think like one. Our work is simple, we connect with crackers, learn how they work. Use their same skills to fight against them or block their attacks. I also extend my domain expertise to the Police Departments for investigating any cyber crime cases and with other intelligence agencies to attack enemy country’s cyber networks, as and when the time demands it. We are in a mission to digitally protect our country, India.

I offer cutting-edge training courses on the subjects like Ethical Hacking, Penetration Testing, Reverse Engineering, Computer Forensics, Malware Analysis etc. So far I have trained more than 3500 engineering students (covering more than 20 engineering colleges) and the number is counting. I’m also regularly invited for corporate training programs to organisations like the Police Department, National Informatics Centre, Software Technology Parks of India, BSNL, Banks and other leading IT companies to train their IT staff on custom tailored courses.

Under my not-for-profit organization, National Ethical Hackers’ Association, we regularly conduct seminars for school children; organize online conferences for parents for better online parental control. We recently plan to move to girls colleges and organize camps for better online safety against Online identity theft on Social Networking Sites, Online Scams and abuse, Awareness of Cyber Rights and Laws so as to bridge the gap between “being abused” and “getting justice”.

As an entrepreneur, I recently started my first IT Security Company – Innovate7 Technologies where we offer managed IT security services like vulnerability assessment, penetration testing of networks (Wired, Wireless, and Bluetooth), applications etc. I’m very soon starting my Sense7 Internet Security as a part of the Innovate7 Technologies Group where we would offer Desktop Internet Security products like Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Firewall, Parental Control, Anti-Malware, Anti-Phishing and Anti-Data Theft. We have a deadline of making them available by January 2010. To our surprise, the very first year our turnover went over Rs. 8 lakhs.

I’m a

- Microsoft Student Partner

- Mozilla Firefox Campus Representative

- Security Researcher and Mentor at ClubHACK India

- Malware Researcher at Indian Honeynet Project

- Malware Analyst at MWCollect Alliance

- Cybercrime Investigator, Bhubaneswar Commissionarate Police




MY STORY begins here,

I’m a nerd, that’s what the category my school mates have put me into. I’m a dreamer. I’m a quick learner. I learnt QBASIC programming at the age of 10 and by 13th; I developed my first quiz game in C, which my friends relish even today. My first book was co-authored by Ankit Fadia: “Software Hacking”.

I’m presently in my 7th semester in the Computer Science & Engineering Department of NM Institute of Engineering & Technology, Bhubaneswar, Orissa. I have always been an average student who is least concerned about studies, grades, scholarships. Anyways I’m lucky enough that I’m studying in such a wonderful college, because, which else college would setup an office and a research lab just for a nerd like me? Yes, I have an office in my college. Together with four friends of mine, we develop software products for our college. Our office is fully furnished with all modern equipments; we are given laptops and internet cards, absolutely free of cost.

Any interesting Incident?? Sometime back in 2008, we managed to discover some serious security vulnerability in a major technical university website in Orissa. We managed to get into site and we had access to their alumni database. We had access information like University Registration No., Phone Numbers, E-Mail Ids and Passwords for accessing the alumni site etc. Many of the students are alumni who are now working in reputed MNCs. We tried to access few email ids with the passwords we got in the database. As we are aware of a common tendency of people to keep a single password across different sites to avoid forgetting them, we tried to access their email accounts with the passwords we had. And we were shocked to see that it worked for almost 85% of all the email accounts. Through emails we got access to their bank accounts and got their credit-card details and their social networking profiles on Orkut, Facebook etc. When we reported back to the University Vice-Chancellor, they simply deleted the database rather than taking countermeasures. And this was disappointing.

After college, I wish to see myself as a successful TECHNOPRENEUR. By successful, I do not mean to be the CEO of a software company and ride a Mercedes but, building an empire of Technology Company that can bring fame to India, on the basis of my technical skills and creating employment opportunities for youth in India. Long way to go..

Life’s biggest lesson to me is that one doesn’t have to wait to get a degree to start; a venture can begin anytime anywhere. What we have is today… :)

User rating 4.9/5

Image

DIGITAL DISTINCTION

Rating Image 4.4
Your rating for Image

1 2 3 4 5    

UNDERGRADUATE AUTHOR- ANKIT FADIA N MOI

Rating Image 4.6
Your rating for Image

1 2 3 4 5    

BY THE WORK

Rating Image 4.6
Your rating for Image

1 2 3 4 5    

DIGITAL OBSERVATION

Rating Image 4.5
Your rating for Image

1 2 3 4 5    

Presentation

There are no presentations uploaded with this story.

Video

There are no videos uploaded with this story.