Ankit Fadia

Early life

Ankit Fadia grew up in Delhi and studied at Delhi Public School, R K Puram. At the age of 10, his parents gifted him a computer and he says he started taking an interest in hacking after a year of playing video games when he read a newspaper article on the subject. He soon started a website hackingtruths.box.sk where he wrote hacking tutorials, which acquired many readers and encouraged him to write a book. At the age of 14, his book on ethical hacking made him the youngest author to be published by Macmillan India. The book received favorable responses in India, made Fadia popular in the country, and turned his hobby into a full-time profession. However, he was also accused of plagiarism.

Career

After his first book came in the limelight, Fadia became sought-after among the corporate clients in India as well as on the conference speaking circuit. He wrote more books on computer security, and spoke at several seminars across schools and colleges in India. In addition, he started providing his own computer security courses, including the "Ankit Fadia Certified Ethical Hacker" programme in alliance with Reliance World.

In 2008, the IMT Ghaziabad Centre for Distance Learning signed an MoU with Fadia to organise its one-year Post-Graduate Diploma in Cyber Security.

In 2009, Fadia stated that he was working in New York as an Internet security expert for "prestigious companies". Fadia also endorsed the Flying Machine jeans brand of Arvind Mills.

Fadia was dismissed as a fad by some security and cryptography enthusiasts, who attributed his success to the tech-illiterate media. Fadia has dismissed the critics who question his credibility as an expert, saying "If I had been fake, my growth would have stopped 10 years ago".

Hacking claims and controversies

In 2002, Fadia claimed that at the age of 17, he had defaced the website of an Indian magazine, Subsequently, he named the magazine as the Indian edition of CHIP magazine, and stated that the editor had offered him a job when informed about the defacement. In 2012, the Forbes India executive editor Charles Assisi (who was editor of CHIP India at the time of the supposed incident), denied that such an incident ever took place after verifying with his predecessor and successor at the magazine as well.

In a 2002 interview published on rediff.com, and online Hacking with Mashup(Sourav) from Bongaon, Kolkata, he stated that at the age of 16, he foiled an attempt by the Kashmiri separatist hackers to deface an Indian website. He stated he gathered information about the attackers, eavesdropped on their online chat using one of their identities, and then mailed the transcript to a US spy organisation that had hired him. He did not divulge the name of the organization he worked for, citing security reasons. The Pakistani hacker group Anti-India Crew (AIC) questioned Fadia's claims: along with WFD, the AIC hacked the Indian government website epfindia.gov.in, dedicating it to Fadia, mocking his capabilities. AIC also announced that it would be defacing the website of the CBEC (www.cbec.gov.in) within the next two days, and challenged Fadia to prevent it by patching the vulnerability.

In 2003, he claimed to have infiltrated a group of hackers and stated that the Pakistani intelligence agencies were paying "Westerners" to deface Indian websites with anti-India or pro-Pakistan content.

Fadia's own website has been hacked multiple times. In 2009, he blamed the defacement on a vulnerability in the servers of his webhost net4india. Independent security experts contested his claim, stating that the problem was a loophole in his own website's code, His website hacked by an Indian hacker Himanshu Sharma, where he accepted the challenge from Ankit Fadia. In 2012, his website was defaced twice by hackers. In the first instance, the hackers rubbished his claims and stated that he was fooling people. Another hacker compromised it in response to a challenge that was issued by Fadia on the Tech Toyz show on CNBC-TV18.

In 2012, DEF CON awarded him with the "Security Charlatan of the Year" award citing him to be a fraudster and his presentations outdated. The website attrition.org mentions him as a security charlatan and accuses him of plagiarism in his work

Television and web shows

In October 2009 MTV India announced the launch of Fadia's new TV show on MTV called MTV What the Hack!, where Fadia gave tips on how to make good use of the Internet and answers people's questions. Internet users could email their problems to MTV India and Fadia gave them a solution on the show.

In 2012, Dell India partnered with Ankit Fadia to create a series of close to 50 videos, each of 1 minute duration to show simple tips and tricks on getting the most out of your PCs, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, etc. These videos were featured on the Dell India Facebook page with an average of one video per week. People also had the opportunity to ask their tech queries to Ankit Fadia on topics like photography, video making, music composing, navigation assistance, gaming, messaging and others.

In 2013, Ankit Fadia started a YouTube show Geek On the Loose in collaboration with PING networks where he shared technology-related tips, tricks and apps. The show gave out handy shortcuts and quickie tech lessons to those in need of a little technological-pick-me-up and was based on situations mentioned in his book FASTER: 100 Ways To Improve Your Digital Life. The show has got more than 750,000+ views on YouTube.

Awards and Recognitions