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New Delhi, Feb 24: They hail from vastly different backgrounds — Donald Trump is the son of a property tycoon while Narendra Modi is a descendant of a poor tea-seller.

Yet the two teetotallers, loved by right-wing nationalists in their home countries, share striking similarities that have seen them forge a close personal bond, analysts say.

Ahead of the American leader's first official visit to India, which begins in Modi's home state of Gujarat on Monday, the world's biggest democracy has gone out of its way to showcase the chemistry between them.

In Gujarat's capital Ahmedabad, large billboards with the words "two dynamic personalities, one momentous occasion" and "two strong nations, one great friendship" have gone up across the city.

"There's a lot that Trump and Modi share in common, and not surprisingly these convergences have translated into a warm chemistry between the two," Michael Kugelman of the Washington-based Wilson Center said.

"Personality politics are a major part of international diplomacy today. The idea of closed-door dialogue between top leaders has often taken a backseat to very public and spectacle-laden summitry."

Since assuming the top political office in their respective countries — Modi in 2014 and Trump in 2017 — the two men have been regularly compared to each other.

Trump, 73, and Modi, 69, both command crowds of adoring flag-waving supporters at rallies. A virtual cult of personality has emerged around them, with their faces and names at the centre of their political parties' campaigns.

A focus of Trump's administration has been his crackdown on migrants, including a travel ban that affects several Muslim-majority nations, among others, while critics charge that Modi has sought to differentiate Muslims from other immigrants through a contentious citizenship law that has sparked protests.

Both promote their countries' nationalist and trade protectionist movements — Trump with his "America First" clarion call and Modi with his "Make in India" mantra.

And while they head the world's largest democracies, critics have described the pair as part of a global club of strongmen that includes Russia's Vladimir Putin and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro.

"There are many qualities that Trump and Modi share — a love for political grandstanding and an unshakable conviction that they can achieve the best solutions or deals," former Indian diplomat Rakesh Sood said.

Modi and Trump have sought to use their friendship to forge closer bonds between the two nations, even as they grapple with ongoing tensions over trade and defence.

Despite sharing many similarities in style and substance, analysts say there are some notable differences between the pair.

Modi is an insider who rose through the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata Party after starting out as a cadre in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Trump is a businessman and a political outsider who has in some sense taken over the Republican Party.

"Modi is a more conventional leader than is Trump in that he hasn't sought to revolutionise the office he holds in the way that Trump has," said Kugelman, a longtime observer of South Asian politics.

He added that genuine personal connections between leaders of both countries have helped to grow the partnership.

"George Bush and Manmohan Singh, Barack Obama and Singh, Obama and Modi, now Modi and Trump — there has been a strong chemistry in all these pairings that has clearly helped the relationship move forward," he added.

Trump has also stood by the Indian leader during controversial decisions, including his revocation of autonomy for Kashmir and his order for jets to enter Pakistani territory following a suicide bombing.

Analysts said the leaders would use the visit to bolster their image with voters.

A mega "Namaste Trump" rally in Ahmedabad on Monday will be modelled after the "Howdy, Modi" Houston extravaganza last year when the Indian leader visited the US and the two leaders appeared before tens of thousands of Indian-Americans at a football stadium.

"The success of this visit... will have a positive impact on his (Trump's) re-election campaign and the people of Indian origin who are voters in the US — a majority of them are from Gujarat," former Indian diplomat Surendra Kumar said.

"On the Indian side, the fact that Prime Minister Modi... (shares) such warmth, bonhomie and informality with the most powerful man on Earth adds to his stature... as well as with hardcore supporters."

Jun 27: Alittle-known Indian IT firm offered its hacking services to help clients spy on more than 10,000 email accounts over a period of seven years.

New Delhi-based BellTroX InfoTech Services targeted government officials in Europe, gambling tycoons in the Bahamas, and well-known investors in the United States including private equity giant KKR and short seller Muddy Waters, according to three former employees, outside researchers, and a trail of online evidence.

Aspects of BellTroX's hacking spree aimed at American targets are currently under investigation by U.S. law enforcement, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment.

Reuters does not know the identity of BellTroX's clients. In a telephone interview, the company's owner, Sumit Gupta, declined to disclose who had hired him and denied any wrongdoing.

Muddy Waters founder Carson Block said he was "disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that we were likely targeted for hacking by a client of BellTroX." KKR declined to comment.

Researchers at internet watchdog group Citizen Lab, who spent more than two years mapping out the infrastructure used by the hackers, released a report that BellTroX employees were behind the espionage campaign.

"This is one of the largest spy-for-hire operations ever exposed," said Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton.

Although they receive a fraction of the attention devoted to state-sponsored espionage groups or headline-grabbing heists, "cyber mercenary" services are widely used, he said. "Our investigation found that no sector is immune."

A cache of data reviewed by Reuters provides insight into the operation, detailing tens of thousands of malicious messages designed to trick victims into giving up their passwords that were sent by BellTroX between 2013 and 2020. The data was supplied on condition of anonymity by online service providers used by the hackers after Reuters alerted the firms to unusual patterns of activity on their platforms.

The data is effectively a digital hit list showing who was targeted and when. Reuters validated the data by checking it against emails received by the targets.

On the list: judges in South Africa, politicians in Mexico, lawyers in France and environmental groups in the United States. These dozens of people, among the thousands targeted by BellTroX, did not respond to messages or declined comment.

Reuters was not able to establish how many of the hacking attempts were successful.

BellTroX's Gupta was charged in a 2015 hacking case in which two U.S. private investigators admitted to paying him to hack the accounts of marketing executives. Gupta was declared a fugitive in 2017, although the U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on the current status of the case or whether an extradition request had been issued.

Speaking by phone from his home in New Delhi, Gupta denied hacking and said he had never been contacted by law enforcement. He said he had only ever helped private investigators download messages from email inboxes after they provided him with login details.

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

Reuters could not determine why the private investigators might need Gupta to download emails. Gupta did not return follow-up messages. Spokesmen for Delhi police and India's foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

HOROSCOPES AND PORNOGRAPHY

Operating from a small room above a shuttered tea stall in a west-Delhi retail complex, BellTroX bombarded its targets with tens of thousands of malicious emails, according to the data reviewed by Reuters. Some messages would imitate colleagues or relatives; others posed as Facebook login requests or graphic notifications to unsubscribe from pornography websites.

Fahmi Quadir's New York-based short selling firm Safkhet Capital was among 17 investment companies targeted by BellTroX between 2017 and 2019. She said she noticed a surge in suspicious emails in early 2018, shortly after she launched her fund.

Initially "it didn't seem necessarily malicious," Quadir said. "It was just horoscopes; then it escalated to pornography."

Eventually the hackers upped their game, sending her credible-sounding messages that looked like they came from her coworkers, other short sellers or members of her family. "They were even trying to emulate my sister," Quadir said, adding that she believes the attacks were unsuccessful.

U.S. advocacy groups were also repeatedly targeted. Among them were digital rights organizations Free Press and Fight for the Future, both of whom have lobbied for net neutrality. The groups said a small number of employee accounts were compromised, but the wider organizations' networks were untouched. The spying on those groups was detailed in a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2017, but has not been publicly tied to BellTroX until now.

Timothy Karr, a director at Free Press, said his organization "sees an uptick in breach attempts whenever we're engaged in heated and high-profile public policy debates." Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, said: "When corporations and politicians can hire digital mercenaries to target civil society advocates, it undermines our democratic process."

While Reuters was not able to establish who hired BellTroX to carry out the hacking, two former employees said the company and others like it were usually contracted by private investigators on behalf of business rivals or political opponents.

Bart Santos of San Diego-based Bulldog Investigations was one of a dozen private detectives in the United States and Europe who told Reuters they had received unsolicited advertisements for hacking services out of India - including one from a person who described himself as a former BellTroX employee. The pitch offered to carry out "data penetration" and "email penetration."

Santos said he ignored those overtures, but could understand why some people didn't. "The Indian guys have a reputation for customer service," he said.

Kochi, Apr 24: The central government on Thursday submitted a statement in the Kerala High Court on the three petitions challenging the contract between Kerala government and US-based data analytics company Sprinklr.

Assistant Solicitor General P Vijayakumar filed the statement on behalf of the central government, which is the second respondent in the case.

The statement said that the contract between the Kerala government and Sprinklr dilutes the rights of the people. It stated the contract does not specify the amount of compensation that individuals should receive in case of breach of privacy or misuse of information.

It also said that it was not clear whether the information was collected and handed over to the data analytics firm with full consent of the patients (suspected and otherwise).

''It is always preferable to utilise the services available in the government sector for sharing sensitive data required for analytical purposes.

The Government of India has introduced the 'Aarogya Setu' application for collection of health data and about seven crore Indian citizens have already downloaded the same. All the state governments are advised to promote the said application for fighting the pandemic," the statement said.

It was further submitted that the "Government of India with the support of NIC is capable of providing all the requirements relating to data storage, processing and application which are being offered the third respondent, if a request to that effect comes from the state government."

Kerala Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala and BJP state president K Surendran had earlier approached the Kerala High Court seeking cancellation of the state government's agreement with Sprinklr for processing of data related to COVID-19 patients.