3 apps that Pakistani spies used to hack into the laptop of Brahmos Aerospace’s missile engineer Nishant Agrawal

Former BrahMos scientist Nishant Agrawal was sentenced to life by a sessions court earlier this for leaking military secrets to Pakistan. Nishant worked in the missile assembly unit at Nagpur. An award-winning missile engineer, Nishant was convicted by the sessions court under Section 235 of Criminal Procedure Code. He was found guilty of offences punishable under Section 66(f) of the IT Act and various sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA) for leaking critical information about armaments to foreign powers.
Pankaj Awasthi, UP-ATS investigation officer, said in his deposition during Nishant trial that one ‘Sejal’ had set up a Facebook account from Pakistan.Using this, she chatted with Pakistani operatives and her Indian targets.

Names of the three apps that Pakistani spies used

The chats showed she was part of a group that shared data and tips on deceiving Indian defence staffers. Awasthi told the court that on Sejal’s directions, Agrawal had clicked on links sent by her and installed three apps on his personal laptop in 2017. These apps were: Qwhisper, Chat to Hire and X-trust.
These three apps were malware that stole data from Nishant’s laptop, which contained classified information. Investigations claim that crucial documents related to the BrahMos missile were found on his personal computers, violating BAPL’s security norms.
Nishant is said to have chatted with Sejal on Linked-in too, where she reportedly showed interest in hiring him, posing as a recruiter in UK’s Hays Aviation.

How missile engineer Nishant was arrested

Nisnant was arrested in October 2018 through a joint operation by Military Intelligence (MI) and the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. He was employed in the technical research section of BAPL, an Indo-Russian joint venture that manufactures BrahMos missiles.
BrahMos Aerospace is a collaborative venture between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the military Industrial Consortium (NPO Mashinostroyenia) of Russia.