== Introduction ==


Abhinav.net was founded in 1998 as an information consultancy project. Their official websiteprovides information on security practices, corporate espionage, and computer fraud investigation. The project was started by Abhinav Chopra, who has worked with several organizations and law enforcement agencies during solving the corporate espionage cases. In 2001, Parag Sonar joined hands with Chopra, and it is believed that's how the portal kick-started. Sonar, being a hardcore database designer, leads the database devision. 2003 was the most diffuclt time for the Abhinav.net project, as a generous sponsor withdrew the amount that was promised to Parag Sonar. However, with continued support from the parent company “Auxus Technologies Group” and few other sponsors, Abhinav.net continued to grow at a decent pace.

Website Information

Despite the fact that several technical write-ups and whitepapers are available on the website hereavailable are free, some of them are quiet old and cannot be used with moving technology. The Ex-Associates of the project have claimed that many of the technical documents available on the portal belongs to them. A hearing from the local court in Delhi is pending.

Work Model

The work model is quiet strange at Abhinav.net, as it does not employ anyone. In past, many of the Associates (those who joined with enthusiasm) left because of the fact that they were just volunteers, and not making any money with it. People working for them are IT professionals from various fields, and they share and contribute their knowledge and resources without getting paid for it. It is an online portal to provide free technical information.

Services

As an internet portal for providing technical and management solutions, Abhinav.net offers a wide range of services. However, their area of expertise is Information Security, Computer Fraud Investigations, and Corporate Espionage prevention.Interestingly, when the project was started in 1998, their main services were to provide support in backup applications and mail servers. But in 2001, a hacker intrusion in a well-known Fortune 100 (based in New Delhi) gave the opportunity to small team of Abhinav.net. After the successful elimination of the attack, and documented investigation with the law enforcement agencies in New Delhi, they were recognized. This instance also kick-started their consultancy in Information Security related areas.Also, in 2003, a small team of two associates of Abhinav.net project discovered a backdoor exploit of a well known private BPO setup of a computer manufacturer. The backdoor exploit was found in the remote access modem connected to the Nortel PABX Switch.This news was well covered in the regional newspapers of Bangalore, and Karnataka.

Official Logo & Website

Recently, there have been a sharp decline in a unique visitors accessing their project site. In 2002 everyday unique hits were 2200, which is now(in 2005) dropped to only 500. The "support thru Portal" concept has not given any extraordinary response. However, even after a decline in number of visitors per day, the average duration of their visits remained quiet high- approx 22 minutes.

Criticism

In 2004, few information technology professionals claimed that Abhinav.net was providing training in unethical hacking and other practices. Also, there were several complaints from the Associates involved in this project, when their written submissions and other contribution was copyrighted by the internet portal. According to Amrit Pal Singh " there is nothing wrong in it, as they were working for us, and they contributed to this portal, knowing and signing the contracts that clearly states the copyright clause.".

Several other factors are also responsible that led to the departure spree of associates. At this moment, there are only 80 Associates working for the project. In 2004, there were more than 275 Associates active in the project.