On January 6th, left-wing propaganda portal The Wire published a report claiming that BJP was using an app to manipulate trends and automatically spew hate online. Relying on an August 2020 tweet and some ‘source’, The Wire claimed that the party was using one software named Tek Fog, led by BJP leader Devang Dave. Even though Dave completely denied the allegations in an email to Wire, they still proceeded to publish the story.
In the report, Wire claimed that the so-called Tek Fog app allowed BJP to ‘hijack’ the Twitter trends, allowed managing multiple WhatsApp accounts and direct online harassment of anti-BJP journalists. The report claims that the app can bypass all kinds of security features that major social media platforms have. According to The Wire, Tek Fog has some kind of superpower, which has capabilities that even NSA of USA does not have. According to Wire, hacking top apps like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp etc is a child’s play using the app, and all security featured of those platforms vanish with this magical piece of software.
The portal based the story on a couple of tweets by one Aarthi Sharma, who in August 2020 had claimed on Twitter that she was working in the IT cell since 2014, and was promised a govt job. After not getting the promised job, she ‘revealed’ that she was asked to use the ‘secret app’ Tek Fog, which bypasses reCAPTCHA codes and is used to auto-upload text and hashtag trends.
Before publishing the story, The Wire had contacted Devang Dave for his comments, and he had completely denied the allegations. In a mail sent to the portal, he had said that BJP or BJYM never indulged in any such social media manipulation. Saying that the organisation does not need such apps to manipulate things, Dave had said that none in the organisation was even aware of any such app.
Referring to Wire saying that the app had accessed BJYM website, Dave had replied that as the website is in the public domain, any app can access the website, but this does not mean that they have links with the app. He had clarified that BJYM and another website mentioned in the article didn’t have any association with the Tek Fog app.
Speaking to OpIndia, Devang Dave reiterated that he and his team members were not even aware of the app, and there is no question of any link with it. He mentioned that the Wire report itself says how the claims made are not verifiable, and despite they published the report using some technical jargon.
Dave also denied any knowledge of anyone named Aarthi Sharma working in BJP’s IT cell, who is the primary basis of the Wire report.
Based on the claims of Aarthi Sharma, Wire claims to have started investigating the same, and said that they obtained some information from some a source they didn’t reveal. But if one reads the report, it can be found that Wire published the claims despite the fact that they could not verify the claims, and they just blindly reported what their ‘source’ gave them.
Clams that can’t be verified, technically not possible
The Wire said they couldn’t access the Tek Fog app, but was able to find some scripts which allowed them to connect to a secure server hosting the Tek Fog app. The source supposedly provided screenshots of the app to Wire, to prove its existence. The report didn’t any include any example of the script, or the URL/IP addresses of the ‘secure server’ that hosted the app.
According to Wire, this Tek Feg has some kind of superpower that can bypass all security features of all social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Telegram. They claim the app can bypass email and OTP verifications required to log on to those platforms to create temporary accounts.
However, Wire added that they could not verify this claim, as they could not verify whether the mentioned accounts were created by the app or created manually using the normal process.
Another claim made in the report was that the app can ‘hijack’ inactive WhatsApp accounts of people and can send messages to their contacts from their phones. It claims it was done to phish personal information from targeted users to add to a could based political database.
Wire claims this allegation was verified, as the source was able to hijack the inactive WhatsApp account of one of the authors, and send messages from that account. However, anyone with basic knowledge of computers will know that unless the target phone is already infected with some malware or trojan, this is not possible. Real-world hacking does not work as shown in movies, and for an end-to-end encrypted app like WhatsApp, it is even more difficult.
If the inactive WhatsApp account of the Wire author was actually hacked, it means the device was already hacked using some malicious link the ‘source’ had sent them.
The report also claimed the app can delete or remap all existing Twitter accounts at a moment’s notice, and as usual, The Wire could not independently verify this claim.
Claims that don’t need an spy app
The report further claimed that the app was used for targeted harassment of journalists by auto replying to them with abusive keywords. It says that the list of targets is maintained in Google Sheets, which is used to ‘auto-reply’ to those journalists. Wire claims they verified it by analysing replies sent to some female journalists over a four months period in 2021. They claim that 18% of all replies to 280 woman journalists were sent from Twitter accounts managed by the Tek Fog app.
However, the Wire had already admitted that they could not verify whether the listed accounts were created manually or created using Tek Fog, therefore, it is not verifiable that the 18% replies were auto-generated using the app.
Moreover, the report itself claims that they could not access any of the Google Sheets, as apparently, the app operatives do not allow that. But as proof of the claim, they cited an Alt News report which showed the use of online spreadsheets for tweets by BJP.
But the fact is, that is not proof, and what Alt News reported was not something illegal, and there was nothing automated in that. The Alt News report showed that BJP leaders were tweeting texts provided in a Google Sheet. This is a normal social media operation that most organisations do. They prepare the text to be shared, then distribute them to the members, or social media influencers in case of paid campaigns, and accordingly the users post the text from their accounts. They copy-paste the text and share the same, there is no automation involved, and is just an organised campaign.
Just because some organisation gets thousands of its members to post similar text on social media, which can result in trending hashtags, does not make it some illegal operation or hacking, and it does not need any hacking app like the so-called Tek Fog. The organisations can use any tool to distribute the content to their members, like a document saves on a cloud drive, a mailing list, a messaging group etc.
Similarly, auto-replying on Twitter also does not require any specialised spy app, anyone who can develop Twitter bots can do this. It is not some hacking that Wire wants us to believe, it is actually a feature that Twitter provides. Even though Twitter does not allow using bots used tor spamming, the normal use of bots is allowed, like auto-replying to specific keywords.
However, there is absolutely no proof in the Wire report that the auto-replies were sent using the Tek Fog app, as they themselves could not verify that the accounts were being managed using the app.
Wire claims that Tek Fog was used to control several accounts present both on Twitter and Sharechat, and the same content was shared on both the platforms. But the report does not explain what is the problem with that. So many social media users post the same content on different social platforms. In fact, there are apps that allow connecting different social media platforms to share content on all of them from a single app. There are legitimate apps available for this purpose, and organisations use them regularly, no secret app is needed for that.
Everyone named in the report has denied the claims
Apart from Devang Dave, all others named in the report have also denied any link with the app, and said they are not even aware of it.
The report claimed that the Tek Fog app is linked to Sharechat, but Sharechat has denied any link with the purported app. In a response from the company added to the report later, Sharechat said that they are not aware of the Tek Fog app.
The Wire report claimed that apart from using various online tools, the Teg Fog tram also had links with “pro-establishment Hindi-and-English websites and news platforms, including Republic World, OpIndia, ABP News and Dainik Jagran”. While we can’t talk about other media houses, OpIndia categorically denies this allegation. No member of the OpIndia team was aware of any app called Tek Fog, so there is no question of any link.
It further claims that the app’s link with BJYM was proved with two IP addresses. It said that 172.104.48.129 and 103.53.43.161 had accessed the Tek Fog app, and the first IP address is linked with BJYM, while the second is linked with a website managed by Devang Dave. However, a simple check shows that the first IP address is based in Singapore, and is linked with a cloud computing provider named Linode.
Moreover, Dave has clarified that the app may have accessed the BJYM website, that does not mean they are linked.
Persistent Systems, another company accused of collaborating with the app, also has denied any involvement.
