Hyderabad: Critically acclaimed journalist Rana Ayyub on Wednesday said that somebody claiming to be herself has been writing to security experts and international correspondents at multiple publications for sensitive information from different email addresses.
This is the second time a well known anti-establishment journalist has come under online phishing attacks. Earlier in January, former NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan tweeted that she had been the target of a “very serious phishing attack” and had learnt that what she believed was an offer to teach at Harvard University was fake. Nidhi Razdan had quit NDTV last year after a 21-year stint to take up the offer.
Rana Ayyub Tweeted on Wednesday, “Somebody claiming to be ‘Rana Ayyyb, India correspondent of Washington Post’ has been writing to security experts and international correspondents at multiple publications for sensitive information from multiple email ids.”
Rana Ayyub is a well known and critically acclaimed journalist and global opinion writer at multiple international publications. She is famous for her expose of the culprits of the 2002 Gujarat riots while she was working Tehelka magazine.
In the Tweet, Ayyub stated that some journalists ended up sharing sensitive information, especially contact details with this imposter in good faith.
“The Washington Post has been informed and I would request anyone receiving such mails to please alert me at the earliest,” she stated. This is the second time a well known anti-establishment journalist has come under online fishing attackls.
Earlier former NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan tweeted on January 15, that she had been the target of a “very serious phishing attack” and had learnt that what she believed was an offer to teach at Harvard University was fake. Nidhi Razdan had quit NDTV last year after a 21-year stint to take up the offer.
In her statement on Twitter earlier, Razdan said she had been given to believe that she would be joining Harvard in September but while she was preparing for her new job, she was told because of the pandemic, classes would begin in January.
She said she sensed something amiss in the delays and noted what she called “administrative anomalies” in the process described to her.
“At first, I had dismissed these anomalies as being reflective of the new normal being dictated by the pandemic, but recently the representations being made to me were of an even more disquieting nature. As a result, I reached out to senior authorities at Harvard University for clarity. Upon their request, I shared some of the correspondence that I believed I had received from the University,” Razdan had said.
“After hearing from the University, I have now learnt that I have been the victim of a sophisticated and coordinated phishing attack. I did not, in fact, receive an offer by Harvard University to join their faculty as an Associate Professor of Journalism. The perpetrators of this attack used clever forgeries and misrepresentations to obtain access to my personal data and communications and may have also gained access to my devices and my email/social media accounts,” she added.