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Edward Snowden sharpened his hacking skills in Delhi

  The hacker who shook the US intelligence machinery and had world leaders railing against Washington for spying on them picked up crucial skills in India. Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower, spent a week in New Delhi training in core Java programming and advanced ethical hacking. It's this training that got him certified as an EC-Council Certified Security Analyst (ECSA).

Now hiding in Russia as a fugitive from US law and charged with espionage for leaking documents related to the US surveillance, Snowden trained at offshore IT training and certification provider Koenig Solutions in Moti Nagar, New Delhi in 2010. He flew into India on September 3 from Japan and left for the US on September 9.

The Registration of Foreigners Rule 1939 Form C Hotel Arrival report, a copy of which is with TOI, shows Snowden checked into Koenig Inn run by the institute in Karol Bagh at 2.30pm on September 3. "He paid over $2,000 towards his training fee, lodging and boarding," said Rohit Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Koenig Solutions. Koenig is an authorized training partner for certification programmes from companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, EC-Council, Citrix and VMware. It has trained over 20,000 foreign IT professionals across five centres in the country and one in Dubai.

ECSA is a 4-day course designed to train security professionals in advanced tools and techniques required to perform comprehensive information security tests. It enables students to design, secure and test networks to protect firms from threats that hackers and crackers pose. "To beat a hacker, you need to think like one!" says the EC-Council website.

"Snowden was a certified ethical hacker and hence he chose a fast-track course. It didn't take him much time to figure out how to create exploit-attacks and hack wireless networks. He was able to interpret vulnerabilities and outcomes in security testing," said Sisir Pandey, technical manager in information security at Koenig who trained Snowden on ECSA.

Snowden sent an email from Japan, where he was then staying on July 23, 2009, enquiring about the Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator Course and Certified Ethical Hacker Certification programmes from EC-Council. Koenig sent the visa invitation letter to Snowden that was submitted to the embassy in Japan.

Emails exchanged between Snowden and Koenig reveal he had multiple security certifications - the Microsoft Certified Solutions Experts (MCSE) certification, EC-Council's Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Project Management Professional (PMP) and Network+ and Security+ certifications from the Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), an IT trade association that helps advance global IT professionals.

Koenig centre manager Hema Sharma, who interacted with Snowden during his stay in New Delhi, remembers him as a quiet person. "He kept to himself. He was unassuming and nothing out of the ordinary. He was focused on the curriculum. He would frequently visit the Haldirams restaurant next to our centre," she said. Snowden's Java trainer Saurabh Sharma, who has left Koenig, remembered him as a student but could not recollect too many details.