New Delhi: In a detailed account after her announcement that she fell victim to a sophisticated phishing attack that lured her into thinking she had been hired as a journalism professor at Harvard University in the US, senior journalist and former NDTV anchor Nidhi Razdan on Saturday alleged that the entire process of her fake appointment was an elaborate plan to access her “bank account, personal data, my emails, my medical records, passport and my devices like my computer and phone”.
Writing for NDTV, Razdan explained how the phishing attack comprised not merely the exchange of a few phone calls and emails but elaborate interviews, forged appointment letters, and access to her private information. Her account may also give Harvard University a reason to be worried about its network security too.
“Back in June 2020, I had announced on Twitter that I was moving on from NDTV after nearly 21 years to join Harvard University as an Associate Professor to teach journalism. I truly believed it was a terrific opportunity. But here I am, almost eight months later, devastated by the realisation that this entire process to “hire” me; my “appointment” to Harvard was all part of an elaborate and sophisticated phishing attack…,” she wrote.
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She went on to give a chronological account of how the entire process unfolded over the last year, and how it was only after the month of September that she realised that something was amiss about it.
“In November of 2019, I was invited to speak at an event organised by the Harvard Kennedy School in early 2020. One of the apparent organisers of this event contacted me separately to say there was a vacancy for a teaching position and would I be interested. I submitted my CV, thinking I had nothing to lose by trying. I never really expected anything to come of it. A few weeks later I was “interviewed” online for 90 minutes. It all seemed legitimate, the questions were thorough and professional. I did a basic google search and found a journalism degree programme being offered by the Harvard Extension School,” she said.
Cybercrime representational image. Photo: Reuters/Kacper Pempel/Files.
“Contrary to what many are tweeting, Harvard has a school called the Extension School offering a Journalism Degree Programme. The actual programme is called the Master of Liberal Arts, Journalism degree. The Extension School lists 500 faculty of whom 17 are categorised as journalism faculty. A number of these people are working journalists. I believed I fit this profile,” she added.
Then she elaborated on how her appointment was presented as legitimate through a series of emails from “an alleged Harvard Human Resources person from what appeared to be an official Harvard email ID, with an offer letter and agreement”. All of those looked genuine as the letters contained authentic university insignia and signatures of existing administrative and teaching heads of the university.
“They (attackers) also separately emailed my former employers at NDTV and others for recommendation letters and official-looking acknowledgments were sent back to them. They too did not think anything was amiss,” she said, adding that the attackers also managed to get her to share her personal information for a “work visa”.
“I was also sent an “official” invitation to attend a faculty orientation in March 2020 but that was called off due to the pandemic. I honestly didn’t think anything of it since COVID had suddenly started disrupting all our lives and lockdowns were being announced the world over,” she wrote.
She said that even as the attackers used the pandemic as a reason to postpone her classes, she was sent class schedules and details of the subjects she would be teaching. While the classes were to start online in September 2020, the attackers pretended that they had to postpone the classes until January because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Only when there were repeated delays in her salary disbursement which she was supposed to get from September onwards irrespective of class schedules, she began to feel that “something wasn’t right.”
“At one point they even sent me a bank transfer slip even though no money ever came. By now I realised something wasn’t right. I still didn’t imagine this was a massive fraud but thought it was a lack of coordination between university departments,” she said.
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It was then she wrote to the head of HR and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard in December, and realised that she had been duped when they replied a week ago.
“It was only earlier this week that I heard back from them telling me there was no record of my appointment and that the people claiming to be their HR staff do not exist! I wrote back to Harvard expressing shock at this and urged them to take this matter seriously since there are people impersonating their senior staff and even forging their signatures on fake letterheads, including the Vice President of HR and their Chief Financial Officer,” she said.
“I also immediately wrote to those entities or organisations with whom I was associated and told them what had happened. My lawyer read all the emails and realised that this was a massive phishing exercise, in all likelihood aimed at stealing my money and taking my personal data to misuse it,” she added.
Razdan said that she has now filed a police complaint and shared all documents with the police. I have filed a police complaint and handed over all the documents and communication. This was a gross criminal act.
She said that she could have done “more due diligence” and that she was “very shaken by this and keep kicking myself for being such an idiot” but fell for the trap nonetheless. “In hindsight, I guess I never saw any cause for alarm because of the pandemic and the chaos and disruption it had caused the world over. Also, because no one ever asked me for money, this was a very sophisticated attack. And that there is a lesson for me and for us all – never trust anything online,” she appealed to her readers.
“I am angry, disappointed and upset but also relieved that I found out what was going on and alerted authorities including Harvard before any serious damage was done. If after all this the only thing I can be accused of is being stupid, then I’ll take it on the chin, learn from it and move on,” she ended her account thus.