Tek Fog

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Tek Fog is a secret software application operable via a mobile phone for psychological operations. It is reportedly used by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the right-wing Hindu nationalist party that has been the ruling party of India since 2014, to infiltrate social media platforms in order to promote favourable viewpoints through misinformation and target perceived opponents.[1][2] The application also managed a huge database of Indian citizens, based on occupation, religion, age, gender etc., and delivered targeted insults and criticism.[2][3] A key function of the software was to manipulate trending features on Twitter and Facebook, by automatically sharing or retweeting posts, and promoting existing hashtags to trending levels.[1] Le Monde commented that it is perhaps the most elaborate online political manipulation operation ever discovered.[4]

Alerted by a disgruntled employee-turned-whistleblower, the independent Indian news publication The Wire conducted a two-year investigation and published its findings in January 2022,[1] reporting that the Tek Fog application was used "to artificially inflate the popularity of the [Bharatiya Janata Party], harass its critics and manipulate public perceptions at scale across major social media platforms."[5][6]

The Wire investigation implicated the BJP along with private companies Persistent Systems and Mohalla Tech (which operates a service called ShareChat) in the deployment of the app. The BJP's youth wing (BJYM) members are said to have supervised the operators, giving them ideological directions. It reported that Mohalla Tech was involved in the management of Tek Fog, and that the whistleblower that revealed information about Tek Fog, was paid via Mohalla Tech as their assigned client, and ShareChat was widely exploited by Tek Fog.[5] The investigation found that Persistent Systems was involved in the production and management of Tek Fog. An internal source within Persistent System confirmed the involvement of the company, with 17,000 files connected to Tek Fog developed by Persistent Systems.[5]

Opposition parties have denounced the app as a national security threat and demanded a probe. The ruling BJP and the prime minister Narendra Modi were silent. The BJP youth wing functionary Devang Dave who is said to have supervised the operations denied the party's involvement.[1] MP Derek O'Brien has called for a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs to discuss the app.[7] Congress has urged the Supreme court to ask its expert panel to investigate the app.[8] The Editors Guild of India condemned "the online harassment of women journalists, which includes targeted and organised online trolling as well as threats of sexual abuse" and demanded steps to break and dismantle the "misogynistic and abusive digital eco-system" of Tek Fog. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, in its response to the parliamentary committee, said that it had been unable to find the app in the mobile app stores.

The Wire Investigation[]

An investigation by The Wire found that Tek Fog, a piece of application software, was used by the information technology cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP IT Cell) as part of its social media campaigning to spread propaganda.[9] In 2022, The Wire reported that the Tek Fog app was used by BJP "to artificially inflate the popularity of the party, harass its critics and manipulate public perceptions at scale across major social media platforms."[5][2][9]

Tek Fog was used to manage inauthentic accounts en masse on social media. Tek Fog was capable of hacking the contact lists of inactive WhatsApp accounts[1] in order to mass message their contacts with propaganda messages, while impersonating the inactive WhatsApp account owner.[10]

The Wire, in its report, described the app as being capable of several actions. Some of the capabilities said to have been incorporated into the app are listed below.

Hijacking of social media trends[]

The Tek Fog app could hijack the 'trending' section of social media sites, Twitter and Facebook. The operators of Tek Fog could share and forward social media messages automatically by an individual or a group. This was used to artificially inflate the popularity of "extremist narratives and political campaigns."[11]

Phishing and capturing inactive WhatsApp accounts[]

Tek Fog was capable of hacking inactive WhatsApp accounts en masse in order to mass message their contacts with propaganda messages, while impersonating the inactive WhatsApp account owner. (Inactive WhatsApp accounts are those accounts that were not being used by their owners, either because WhatsApp was uninstalled from their phone or their phone was reset.)[10]

As a first step of the process, the targeted WhatsApp accounts that were active were sent a media file (video or image) from an unknown number. The media file contained spyware that became active after download. The downloaded spyware would make the phone vulnerable to remote surveillance. The hacker would be able to monitor its activity status. When the phone became inactive due to (unistallation or reset), the inactive status would be visible to the hacker, who could take control of the target account and use it to send messages remotely, without the knowledge of the owner of the targeted WhatsApp account.[10]

Only inactive WhatsApp accounts were targeted, since sending messages remotely from an active WhatsApp account would raise suspicion from the original owner.[10]

According to The Wire, while verifying this exploit, the whistleblower with access to Tek Fog was able to hack and take control of a test WhatsApp account used by its reporters "within minutes". The application then sent a message to all the frequent contacts of the captured account.[10]

Database of private citizens for targeted harassment[]

Tek Fog had an extensive, dynamic cloud database of private citizens with information about their "occupation, religion, language, age, gender, political inclination and even physical attributes like skin tone and breast size."[11] The Wire had received screenshots that showed these parameters.[11] The Wire verified the existence of database by monitoring harassment messages that were sent with extreme granularity to "female journalists", who were among the targeted groups.[10] The database could automatically generate messages, which were mostly hateful or abusive in nature, by either connecting to Google Sheets or automatically generating phrases. [5]

Modification of existing news articles[]

Tek Fog had an ability to modify existing news articles to change its links and keywords. The changed link would then lead the read to a webpage that looked similar to the original website but had fake content, different from what the original author had written. The text modification capabilities were powered by artificial intelligence models.[10]

Automated messaging[]

Tek Fog could send automated messages from inauthentic accounts automatically created in bulk. These primarily contained political propaganda and abuse messages.

The operators of Tek Fog used the database to send automated hate messages, which were used to target Muslims and female journalists whose work was not in line with the right-wing Hindutva BJP narrative. The researchers discovered that 18% of the total 4.6 million replies received by 280 prominent women journalists on Twitter were made by the accounts operated through Tek Fog app. These replies were made over a period of 5 months.[12]

Organisations involved[]

The use of Tek Fog was said to be a part of a political-corporate nexus that had connected large tech players and platforms with the political party BJP.[11]

This nexus included:-

  • Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) (Youth wing of Bharatiya Janata Party). A former National Social Media and IT Head of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha who currently worked as the election manager of BJP in Maharashtra was the immediate supervisor of the source in The Wire investigation. BJYM members supervised the operators and gave them ideological operation. The Wire verified their involvement using the codes sent through their official email id. These codes helped to identify the secure server hosting Tek Fog and external websites connecting to the Tek Fog server.[11]
  • Persistent Systems is an Indian-American technology services company involved in development and maintenance. A current employee of the company provided documents related to the development of the application from the company's internal servers. It showed around 17,000 assets found by the search term "Tek Fog".[11]
  • ShareChat is a social media platform created by Mohalla Tech Pvt. Ltd. The operatives of the Tek Fog had used Sharechat, "to test and curate fake news, political propaganda and hate speech before automating it to other popular social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp". The involvement of ShareChat was verified through 14 accounts controlled using Tek Fog. These 14 accounts had made posts on Share chat, Twitter and Facebook in April 2020. The Wire found that 90% of the social media posts from these accounts were first uploaded on ShareChat after which they were moved to Twitter or Facebook.[11]

Victims[]

The Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) in a statement condemning the app said that the "Women journalists have been prime targets of the app. The Wire investigation lists women journalists who received up to one million abusive tweets between January and May 2021. They include Rana Ayyub, Barkha Dutt, Nidhi Razdan, Rohini Singh, Swati Chaturvedi, Sagarika Ghose, Manisha Pande, Faye D'Souza, Arfa Khanum Sherwani and Smita Prakash".[13]

On 9 January, journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani released a list of prominent women from several religions including Hindus, who were targeted and harassed by Tek Fog.[14]

Military grade psychological operations weapon[]

Anand Venkatnarayanan, an Indian internet security researcher and author of book on information warfare, said that Tek Fog is a military grade psychological operations weapon. So far the capabilities that are part of Tek Fog were only accessible to state actors who used them against the population in enemy countries. He said, "Putting such a weapon in the hands of non-state actors affiliated to a political party contesting for mind space of citizens in a democracy has never been done before."[1]

Reactions[]

The journalist body, Editors Guild of India said that The Wire investigation "laid bare an extensive and well funded network built around an app, Tek Fog, which steals unused WhatsApp accounts to send out toxic messages to targeted journalists", "several women journalists were subjected to thousands of abusive tweets". "The purpose of this deeply hurtful messages was to instill fear in them and prevent them from expressing themselves freely and go about their jobs."[15] The Editors Guild condemned "the continuing online harassment of women journalists, which includes targeted and organised online trolling as well as threats of sexual abuse." The Guild demanded "urgent steps to break and dismantle this misogynistic and abusive digital eco-system".[16][17]

Congress party called Tek Fog, "a poisonous weapon of the BJP’s propaganda machinery, which is harmful to the country".[18] The Minister of State for Home in Maharashtra government, Satej Patil questioned the silence of the Government of India and Information and Technology ministry over the Tek Fog expose. Patil demanded that the Union government should take cognisance of the issue.[19] He made a public appeal to the victims from Mumbai that were targeted by Tek Fog app to register a police complaint, after which Maharashtra Police and Cyber Crime Investigation Cell will investigate the case.[20]

Journalist Zarrar Khuhro, wrote in Dawn, Tek Fog "was used in many underhanded ways to promote the hateful Hindutva ideology, and in particular to abuse and cow activists, journalists and opposition politicians."[21]

Reactions of BJYM, Persistent Systems and ShareChat[]

It was reported byThe Washington Post that the "Indian publication The Wire spent two years investigating the Tek Fog app. They said it had India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's "footprints," but didn't definitively tie it to the party".[3] Devang Dave, head of BYJM IT Cell, denied that he or anyone from his organisation knew about such an app.[3] Persistent systems and Mohalla Tech denied any involvement with each other or with Tek Fog.[5][22]

Investigation by Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs[]

On 12 January 2022, The Hindu reported that Anand Sharma, the head of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, had written to the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of India seeking a response on Tek Fog. They directed the Ministry to co-ordinate with other ministries, and provide information on the app and it's use by 20 January 2022.[23]

The investigation was initiated after several calls for the Standing Committee to investigate Tek Fog. Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien (of the Trinamool Congress), a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs had previously written to Anand Sharma, the head of the committee, to discuss the secret app "Tek Fog" that "has serious ramifications and could jeopardise national security". He wrote, "This application is capable of penetrating encrypted messaging platforms and secure social media conversations, in order to heavily manipulate and exploit narratives on said platforms."[24] Chairman Sharma was reported to have taken note of the matter, and may be discussed in the next meeting of the Parliamentary Panel on Home Affairs.[25] On 10 January, O'Brien wrote a second letter to convene a meeting to discuss Tek Fog. He wrote that the app provided an ability to hijack the WhatsApp accounts of citizens using spywares. The inactive contacts of the hijacked number would then be used to send mass messages. He wrote, "All of the hijacked number's contacts are synced to a database on cloud, ripe for picking as future targets of disinformation and harassment... It is also pointed out that this hacking technique was formerly used by the Pegasus spyware, before the NSO Group developed an even more sophisticated zero-click hijacking method,". The application could send automated messages, spread misinformation, fake news and mislead citizens.[7]

On 12 January, Congress leader and leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury also wrote to the chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, Anand Sharma, asking the committee discuss the "Violative Software Application 'Tek Fog'", in their next meeting.[26]

The Parliamentary standing committee asked the Union Home Ministry to provide information about the 'Tek Fog' app that was allegedly used for manipulating social media trends. On 12 February, responding to the request, MoS for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said, "The ministry has searched for the app on all prominent app stores and APK stores and could not find so called app in any of these online stores."[27]

Call for Supreme Court intervention[]

Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate held a press conference on the issue where she "urged the Supreme Court to look into this and to punish, in no uncertain terms, the people who are behind this because no one should have the right or the freedom to erode India’s democracy". Congress wanted the Supreme Court to get the issue examined by the expert panel that was looking into the alleged use of the Pegasus spyware on Indian citizens.[28] She said that the app "targets Indian citizens and hurts the very foundation of our democracy".[8] Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called the app, one of the several "factories of hate" set up by BJP.[29]

The Editors Guild of India cited the investigative report by The Wire, and urged the Supreme Court to order an investigation into the allegations that the Tek Fog app was used to harass women journalists with abusive tweets. The report had alleged that influential people from the ruling party BJP may be involved.[17]

The Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) issued a statement, asking for an "urgent inquiry by the Supreme Court into the role of social media and tech companies in amplifying the crime of Hate Speech,". The alleged use of the Tek Fog app by the ruling-BJP, was condemned by the DUJ.[13]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c d e f Culpan, Tim; Mukherjee, Andy (12 January 2022). "India's Tek Fog Shrouds an Escalating Political War". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
  2. ^ a b c Leloup, Damien (6 January 2022). "Tek Fog, un vaste système pour manipuler l'opinion sur les réseaux sociaux en Inde" [Tek Fog, a vast system to guide opinion on social networks in India]. Le Monde.fr (in French).
  3. ^ a b c A cyber commission was Congress' secret weapon The Wasington Post, 7 January 2022. ProQuest 2617607410
  4. ^ Leloup, Damien (6 January 2022). "Tek Fog, un vaste système pour manipuler l'opinion sur les réseaux sociaux en Inde" [Tek Fog, a vast system to guide opinion on social networks in India]. Le Monde.fr (in French). Retrieved 6 January 2022. C’est peut-être la plus élaborée des opérations de manipulation politique en ligne jamais découverte : le site d’information indien The Wire révèle, jeudi 6 janvier, l’existence d’un vaste système de manipulation des messages sur les réseaux sociaux en Inde. Mise en place, selon les investigations du média, au profit du parti hindouiste ultraconservateur Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), parti du premier ministre, Narendra Modi, cette opération, toujours en cours, est gérée par le biais d’une simple application pour téléphones : Tek Fog.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Kaul, Ayushman; Kumar, Devesh (6 January 2022). "Tek Fog: An App With BJP Footprints for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends". The Wire. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
  6. ^ "An App Called Tek Fog Helps Cyber Troops With Links to BJP Automate Hate Online, an Investigation Reveals". NewsClick. 6 January 2022. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
  7. ^ a b "MP Derek O'Brien seeks parliamentary panel meet on 'Tek Fog' app". telegraphindia.com. 10 January 2022. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  8. ^ a b "Congress accuses BJP of using 'Tek Fog' app to propagate its agenda on social media, seeks SC's intervention". Tribuneindia News Service. 7 January 2022. Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  9. ^ a b Subramanian, Samanth (6 January 2022). "Right-wing Indians have their own app to manipulate Whatsapp and Twitter". Quartz. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g "Tek Fog: Morphing URLs to Make Real News Fake, 'Hijacking' WhatsApp to Drive BJP Propaganda". The Wire. 10 January 2022. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Kaul, Ayushman; Kumar, Devesh (7 January 2022). "Explainer: Here's What the Tek Fog App Can Do, and Why You Should Care". The Wire. Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  12. ^ Sanghera, Tish. "Tek Fog: Indian government weaponises social media". FairPlanet. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  13. ^ a b "Delhi Union of Journalists Denounces Tek Fog, Demands SC Intervention". NewsClick. 11 January 2022. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  14. ^ "India: 'Auction' of Muslim women on apps reveals widespread online abuse". Deutsche Welle. 10 January 2022. Retrieved 11 January 2022. Journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani then released on Sunday a list of prominent female voices from various faiths, including Hindus, who have been targeted and threatened by Tek Fog.
  15. ^ "'Abusive Digital Ecosystem': EGI Demands SC To Take Cognisance of Tek Fog App". The Quint. 11 January 2022. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  16. ^ "From Tek Fog to 'Bulli Bai', Editors Guild condemns 'online harassment of women journalists'". Newslaundry. 11 January 2022. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  17. ^ a b "'Misogynistic, abusive': Editors' Guild demands SC probe into Tek Fog app". The News Minute. 11 January 2022. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  18. ^ "BJP conspiring to spread hatred in India: Rahul Gandhi". Kashmir Media Service. 10 January 2022. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  19. ^ "Satej Patil questions govt's silence on Tek Fog expose". Deccan Herald. 10 January 2022. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  20. ^ "Maharashtra: MoS Patil asks Tek Fog victims to lodge police complaint". The Indian Express. 12 January 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  21. ^ Khuhro, Zarrar (17 January 2022). "Fog and shadow". Dawn. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  22. ^ "Persistent confirms no involvement with Tek Fog, Mohalla Tech Pvt. Ltd and Sharechat". www.persistent.com. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  23. ^ "Parliamentary panel seeks response on Tek Fog app". The Hindu. 12 January 2022. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
  24. ^ "'Could Jeopardise National Security': Derek O'Brien Wants Standing Committee To Discuss 'Tek Fog'". The Wire. 6 January 2022. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
  25. ^ "Parliamentary Panel on Home Affairs Likely to Discuss 'Tek Fog' Issue at Next Meeting". The Wire. 9 January 2022.
  26. ^ "After Derek O'Brien, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury Asks Standing Committee to Discuss 'Tek Fog'". The Wire. 12 January 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  27. ^ Service, Tribune News (12 February 2022). "Supreme Court global leader with 1.81L virtual hearings". Tribuneindia News Service. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  28. ^ "Initiate parliamentary probe into Tek Fog app: Trinamool". The Hindu. 7 January 2022. Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  29. ^ "BJP has set up several factories of hate, Tek Fog app one of them: Rahul Gandhi". Deccan Herald. PTI. 8 January 2022. Retrieved 10 January 2022.

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