[ISN] E2-labs' project Ethan dissected. Anatomy of a franchise proposal based on non-existing partnerships (UPDATED)

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:47:15 -0600 (CST)
http://www.zone-h.org/news/id/4731

[So maybe Peerbhoy wasn't trained by Zone-H from details here...
http://www.zone-h.org/news/id/4716 - More details about Peerbhoy,
http://www.infosecnews.org/hypermail/0903/16060.html  - WK]


By Roberto Preatoni
Zone-H.org
22/11/2009

We received a notice that on WikiLeaks somebody uploaded an interesting 
document. It's a PDF file, called Project Ethan (after Tom Cruise's 
Mission Impossible caracther?) and it refers to E2-labs very recent 
plans to open in India an educational and IT security franchise network. 
We downloaded the document and we found some very interesting 
information in it, regarding E2-labs future plans and how the name of 
Zone-H (and a few others) was used to back up the whole plan to convince 
possible investors to invest money in Mr. Zaki Qureshey expansion plans. 
Needless to say, Zone-H was never informed about such plans and never 
gave any consent to be included in it.

The document is a financial investment porposal, made up by 28 pages. It 
seems to be written by Grant Thornton, a well-known financial advisor 
company. We have no doubt that the document was originally produced by 
such company, it's too well structured, E2-labs and Zaki Qureshey 
definitely don't posses the business skills to do that. Nevertheless, 
the document it's filled by improper statements. We don't think that 
Grand Thornton did it on purpose, we just imagine the situation where 
they were given some statements and material by Zaki Qureshey and they 
granted it for real, without verifying it. And that is bad, after all, 
the entire businell proposal carry their name.

The result is a well written document meant to attract possible 
investors, backed up by Grant Thornton name, which sounds to the ears of 
possible investors as a guarantee that it is referring to a serious 
proposal. This is probably the reason why E2-Labs Mr.Zaki Qureshey 
decided to invest some money to look for Grant Thornton advocacy. Just 
another case to use somebody's name for his plans.

In this article, we are going to show some excerpts from that document, 
followed by some of our comments. Why did we decide to make this 
document public? Because that document is yet another example of Mr. 
Zaki Qureshey unethical business practices and because it's involving 
directly my an Zone-H name and because this is the only way we have to 
make clear to the general public that we have nothing to do with Mr. 
Zaki Qureshey bogus proposals.

[...]


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Received on Wed Dec 02 2009 - 22:47:15 PST

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