Citing a report prepared by Russia’s Data Leak Intelligence and Darknet Monitoring Service (DLBI), Izvestia reported that around 150 data leaks occurred between January and June of this year alone, compromising 140 million Russian mobile phone numbers and 46 million email addresses.
The July 29 article warned that scammers could use this information to defraud individuals, businesses and organisations, and suggested authorities had the situation under control, but DLBI statistics do not bear that out.
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The amount of information appearing on the network increased by 14%, despite the number of individual breaches declining from more than 200 during the same period in 2023. The figures also showed that the annual number of identity theft cases in Russia has increased at a rate of about 40% annually since the study began in 2019.
At the same time, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communications, information technology and mass media regulator, announced that the number of personal data leaks in 2024 was about 70, compared with last year’s 110. But even this “favorable” trend obscures the fact that 600 million records were made public, compared with 200 million last year.
Watchdog groups assessed that this level of leak, combined with earlier revelations, means that data on almost all Russian citizens is now publicly available.
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According to the DLBI research report, about 46 percent of the breaches were from e-commerce activities, 16 percent from retail activities, and about 10 percent from online search or use of entertainment resources. In terms of the amount of data lost, the majority came from financial sector activities. More than 80 million records were subject to unauthorized access in the first two months of this year alone.
Artyom Sokolov, president of the Association of Russian Internet Trading Companies (AKIT), said his association’s members have invested heavily in technologies to protect their information systems and have implemented advanced security systems that can resist numerous cyber attacks.
“Many players in the online trading market have implemented strict confidentiality processes for personal data to ensure that no single identifier or piece of information directly or indirectly related to a customer or partner is comparable to a known leak,” Sokoloff said.
The Russian Ministry of Communications told Izvestia that most of the leaks came from third-party suppliers that did not provide an adequate level of information security, and said it was working with the industry to pass legislation imposing mandatory standards for handling electronic data.
Sokolov said such legislation is long overdue, but the phrase “closing the stable door” comes to mind, and it is probably too late for Russia’s 258 million registered mobile phone users.
