Indian IT office spied on the inboxes of politicians, businessmen, attorneys and activists for years

For seven years, a low-profile Indian IT firm reportedly offered its hacking services to clients who wanted to spy on a variety of European officials, gambling tycoons, and U.S. investors.

The New Delhi-based firm, BellTroX InfoTech Services, targeted more than 10,000 emails for the perusal of undisclosed clients, according to an investigative report by Reuters. 

A Citizen Lab researcher told reporters for the wire service that BellTroX's hacking was "one of the largest spy-for-hire operations ever exposed." Citizen Lab is an internet watchdog group that spent several years charting the movements of the hackers.

From 2013 to 2020, BellTroX send tens-of-thousands of messages designed to extract passwords and information from potential victims.

"Our investigation found that no sector is immune," said the Citizen Lab employee. 

The Indian firm also targeted professionals and figureheads from around the globe, including South African judges, Mexican politicians and French lawyers.

Sumit Gupta, the company's owner, was declared a fugitive by the U.S. government in 2017, following charges in an earlier hacking case, in which two U.S. private investigators admitted to paying Gupta to hack the accounts of marketing executives. 

"I didn't help them access anything, I just helped them with downloading the mails and they provided me all the details," Gupta told Reuters. "I am not aware how they got these details but I was just helping them with the technical support."

According to targets of BellTroX's hacking attempts, the messages Gupta sent ranged from emails imitating the written voices of friends, colleagues and relatives, to Facebook login requests and notifications to unsubscribe from pornography sites.

BellTroX declined to disclose its client lists. Former employees of the company said they were typically contracted by private investigators and business rivals or political opponents of their targets.