Anonymous Claims To Have Leaked Nearly One Million Russian State Media Emails

A hacker group affiliated with Anonymous claims to have leaked more than 900,000 emails from Russia’s largest media corporation.

The All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) is a state-owned broadcaster based in Moscow, which comprises five national TV stations, including its flagship channel Russia-1, which reaches 98.5% of Russia’s population, and Russia's first 24/7 news channel Russia 24.

The company also runs two international networks, five radio stations, online broadcasts, a sports news website and the information agency Rossiya Segodnya, which operates the news agency Sputnik.

Towards the end of last month, Emma Best, co-founder of journalistic organisation Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), shared a tweet in which she claimed the organisation had received data from the broadcasting company and would release it 'in the near future'.

The data has come from Network Battalion 65 or NB65, a group affiliated with Anonymous, which claims to have gathered nearly one million emails from VGTRK. DDoSecrets then made the 786.2GB email cache available to the public as a torrent file.

In an update shared last Wednesday, 30 March, Best wrote: "Coming Monday: #DDoSecrets will publish over 20 years and 900,000 emails from VGTRK (All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company), exposing state-owned media to the public in a way never seen before."

Best confirmed the publishing of the data on Monday, 4 April, describing it as an 'unprecedented exposure of state-owned media and propaganda, which the Russian government considers essential to the state security'.

"This data was provided by @xxNB65, who provided over 800 GB of data. After sorting and de-duplication, the total comes to 786.2 GB. In addition to the 900,000+ emails, there are over 4,000 files taken from VGTRK's cloud service, mostly consisting of media assets and clips, etc," Best continued.

A Twitter account associated with Anonymous, which uses the handle @YourAnonNews, shared Best's tweet after the data was made public and encouraged people to 'grab the torrent and translate the emails'.

"Have fun," they continued, adding: "F**k fascists. F**k totalitarians. F**k insecure autocrats. Have fun in your part of further owning these pricks. Explore and share!"

After DDoSecrets shared the data, NB65 implied it would not stop with the near-one million emails as it shared Best's tweet and added: "The leaks will continue!"

It has since addressed the company Continent Express, a travel agency in Russia, and claimed it had 'the unfortunate circumstance of being hacked sideways' and that it could blame its 'President' for the hack.

If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via [email protected]