Tek Fog

Tek Fog is a browser-based software appliction which was allegedly used by the Bharatiya Janata Party to infiltrate social media platforms in order to promote favourable view points and shout down opposing views. The application also managed a huge database of Indian citizens, based on occupation, religion, age, gender etc., and delivered targeted insults and criticism using hijacked inactive accounts. A key function of the software was to manipulate trending features on Twitter and Facebook, by automataically sharing or retweeting posts, and promoting existing hashtags to trending levels.

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. The article alleges that the Tek Fog application was used the BJP "to artificially inflate the popularity of the party, harass its critics and manipulate public perceptions at scale across major social media platforms."

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.

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 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. 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.

MP Derek O'Brien has called for a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, to discuss the app. Congress has urged the Supreme court to ask its expert panel to investigate the app. 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 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. 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."

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

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."

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.)

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.

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

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.

Database of private citizens for targeted harassment

Tek Fog had an extensive 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." The Wire had received screenshots that showed these parameters. 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.

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.

Automated messaging

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

Political-corporate nexus

The use of Tek Fog is part of a political-corporate nexus that had connected large tech players and platforms with the political party BJP.

Organisations involved

• Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (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.
• 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 searc term "Tek Fog".

• 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.

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".

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.

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."

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." 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".

Congress party called Tek Fog, "a poisonous weapon of the BJP’s propaganda machinery, which is harmful to the country". 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. 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.

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."

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.

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." 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. 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.

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.

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. She said that the app "targets Indian citizens and hurts the very foundation of our democracy". Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called the app, one of the several "factories of hate" set up by BJP.

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.

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.

See also

• Pegasus Project revelations in India

Further reading

• Part 1: "Tek Fog: An App With BJP Footprints for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends". The Wire. 6 January 2022.
  • "Explainer: Here's What the Tek Fog App Can Do, and Why You Should Care". The Wire. 7 January 2022.

• Part 2: "Tek Fog: Morphing URLs to Make Real News Fake, 'Hijacking' WhatsApp to Drive BJP Propaganda". The Wire. 10 January 2022.
• Part 3: "Tek Fog in Action: Targeting Women Journalists, Pushing Communal Narrative on COVID, Delhi Violence". The Wire. 14 January 2022.

External links

• @thewire_in (7 January 2022). "Tek Fog: Quick explainer" (Tweet) – via Twitter. The Wire

• Prime Time With Ravish Kumar: Tek Fog App से सावधान! आपके बच्चों को दंगाई बना देगा [Prime Time With Ravish Kumar: Beware of Tek Fog App! [It] will turn your kids into rioters] (in Hindi). NDTV. 11 January 2022.