A hacker group named Silent Crow has claimed to have hacked and obtained data from Russia's state cadastre and cartography agency, the independent Russian news outlet Agentstvo reported on Jan. 7.
Russia’s state register denied the news, issuing a statement that said: "Additional checks of the information published in a number of Telegram channels are currently underway."
The stolen database contained the internal identification of each recording, the name of the real estate’s owner (full name or the name of the legal entity), their date of birth, details of documents (passport), address, and sometimes also phone numbers dating until early 2024, Agentstvo reported.
Agentstvo randomly selected and checked 15 recordings, which all corresponded to real owners.
The hackers claimed to have stolen 2 billion lines, publishing 82 million as proof. It is unclear who is behind the group. The Silent Crow channel where the alleged hack was published was created on Dec. 25. The channel's only post is from Jan. 6 and concerns the leak.
The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify the group’s claims.
Many investigative journalists used Russia’s state registry to expose corruption by showing if someone’s property worth was above their pay grade until 2023, when a Russian law banned the publication of personal information for third parties without the registered person or company’s consent.
Both Russia and Ukraine have widely used cyberattacks to target government institutions and key businesses during the full-scale war. In December, a Russian-backed cyberattack targeted several state registers overseen by Ukraine's Justice Ministry.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
