Qatar takes on 'hack-for-hire' gang to target UK firms and individuals
Targets include former Chancellor Philip Hammond and BBC editor Chris Mason
An undercover investigation by The Sunday Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has uncovered details of a hacking group, operating from India, that has targeted a number of British businesses, officials and journalists in recent years.
The investigation found that the gang was working on behalf of Qatar, host of this year's FIFA World Cup, and that its clientele include private detectives with links to the City of London.
The group, known as WhiteInt, has targeted former UK Chancellor Philip Hamond; BBC political editor Chris Mason; Ashok Hinduja of the Hinduja Group; and Mark Fullbrook, Liz Truss's chief of staff during her time as Prime Minister.
Also on the list are Swiss President Ignazio Cassis; Michel Platini, the former president of European football; Stefan Quandt, a German billionaire who co-owns BMW; and other who have criticised Qatar's hosting of the World Cup.
Undercover reporters from The Sunday Times visited India earlier this year, where they posed as former MI6 agents-turned-corporate investigators.
Once in the country they contacted some of India's top hackers and said they were looking for confidential information about certain targets. They soon started getting offers of assistance and eventually met the WhiteInt gang, which is headquartered in Gurugram, near Delhi.
It is the brainchild of Aditya Jain, 31, who works in the Indian office of British accounting company Deloitte.
Aditya said he had been in charge of a network of hackers for nearly seven years, often hired by British private detectives to get into their targets' email accounts.
The hackers often befriend their victims on social media before sending them phishing links.
"I offer access to closed source information of email and computers of the PoI [person of interest] anywhere across the globe... an average timeline is around 20 to 30 days," Jain said.
He also shared details regarding one of his projects related to FIFA, the governing body that oversees football tournaments and is in charge of organising the World Cup.
"I have successfully worked on obtaining email data of [a] few high profile individuals (in relation to FIFA) based in [the] UK on the behest of a client sponsored by a Gulf country," he said.
In response to inquiries, Jain subsequently admitted that Qatar was the ultimate client. He said a Swiss-based investigator named Jonas Rey had engaged him for the task.
Rey apparently worked for Nick Day, a former MI5 officer, who now owns and operates the Swiss business intelligence firm Diligence Global Business Intelligence: a subsidiary of corporate intelligence firm Diligence, from the City of London.
Court records show that Diligence Global was contracted to work on a World Cup project in January 2019.
Over the course of the next year, Rey started hiring the gang to target individuals who had exposed wrongdoings by the hosts Qatar.
According to The Sunday Times, the Metropolitan Police decided not to take any action even after receiving information about the claims against Qatar in October last year.
Hiring hackers is a crime that carries a potential 10-year sentence in the UK.
Former Cabinet member David Davis demanded that the Met resume its probe into cyberattacks on British residents, claiming that the inquiry showed how London had become into "the global centre of hacking."
"The Met's Counter Terrorism Command has investigated a number of allegations made by an individual, related to surveillance and email hacking between 2019 and October 2021," a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said.
"Officers pursued all available lines of enquiry into the allegations made. No further police action has been taken on this matter.
"As in all cases, if any further information comes to light, it will be assessed."