Didn't get Harvard offer, fell for phishing: Journalist Nidhi Razdan
Well-known journalist Nidhi Razdan claimed on Friday that she fell victim to a sophisticated cyber-attack that made her believe that she has been offered a job by Harvard University. Razdan ended her association with news channel NDTV for this purported stint last year. She said she has written to various organizations and is hoping that police catch the perpetrators. Here's what happened.
A dangerous form of cyber attack, phishing often times deploys emails as a weapon. Perpetrators trick the victim into believing that the message is important and they click a malicious link. This can lead to sensitive information, including details of banks, social media accounts, etc., landing in the wrong hands. Put simply, it is a way to trick the unsuspecting users.
Taking to her Twitter account today afternoon, Razdan revealed something similar happened to her. In June 2020, Razdan left NDTV after 21 years for her new stint, believing that she indeed would be an Associate Professor at the established university soon. The job was supposed to start in September but was pushed to January 2021, in view of the coronavirus pandemic.
Initially, said the journalist, she didn't pay heed to the "administrative anomalies as being the new reflective of the new normal being dictated by the pandemic." However, the "disquieting nature" of the recent representations concerned her. Thereafter, she spoke to Harvard's senior authorities. "Upon their request, I shared some of the correspondence that I believed I have received from the [Harvard] University," she wrote.
After speaking with authorities, she learned of the hoax. "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 wrote.
She has filed a police complaint and furnished all relevant documents. "I have requested them to take immediate steps to identify, apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators of this abominable attack," she wrote, adding that she also informed Harvard about it while urging them to take it seriously.
I have been the victim of a very serious phishing attack. I’m putting this statement out to set the record straight about what I’ve been through. I will not be addressing this issue any further on social media. pic.twitter.com/bttnnlLjuh
— Nidhi Razdan (@Nidhi) January 15, 2021
