Thousands of wealthy Moscow residents who subscribed to a regional internet provider have had personal data including names, home addresses and mobile numbers posted online. People affected by the high-profile data leak are all clients of Moscow-based internet provider Akado Telecom, a large telecommunications network owned by billionaire businessman Viktor Vekselberg, which said it had opened an inquiry into the incident.
Russian authorities have been paying close attention to such incidents following leaks that led to the publication of information about military intelligence agents accused of links to an attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Britain. Reuters saw several hundred records on an international database and identified data including the mobile phone numbers and addresses of a high-ranking Russian government official, a well-known film director and a leading businessman's relative.
The data was uploaded to the database of RIPE NCC, a not-for-profit regional internet registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, said IT specialist Vladislav Zdolnikov, founder of the TgVPN service, which offers VPNs for users of the Telegram messaging application. RIPE NCC operates a public database listing which IP addresses have been allocated to different internet service providers. It should not, however, identify individual customers by name or other personal information.
Companies that are members of the registry, which include Akado Telecom, are responsible for loading data onto the database, said Aleksei Semenyaka, a RIPE NCC communications director.
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