Breached. Kremlin’s new data leaks crackdown scores direct hits on its own security officials turned probiv dealers

Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court has remanded in custody a man with alleged ties to the Federal Security Service (FSB) and a former Ministry of Defence official, as part of a widening crackdown on Russia’s illicit data market, Mediazona can report. The case targets the prominent probiv service, Solaris.

According to the investigation, Kirill Mironov, 43, and Mikhail Seifetdinov, 32, created the Solaris platform to collect personal data and sell reports containing it. The case was initiated on July 17 , and Seifetdinov was detained on July 24, the same day Solaris went offline.

Kirill Mironov, alleged to be the owner of Solaris, had his detention hearing conducted behind closed doors. Sources cited by investigative journalist Andrey Zakharov also identify Mironov as the owner. During the hearing, an investigator referred to him as a former employee of a “federal service”, while his lawyer stated Mironov “has a connection to the special services” and presented the judge with corroborating documents.

Mikhail Seifetdinov‘s defence argued that he has a role essential for Russia’s “nuclear deterrence” system and had cooperated with the investigation by providing access to all his devices and passwords. A former Ministry of Defence employee, Seifetdinov’s professional profile states he worked on projects to “popularise the image” of the ministry between 2016 and 2019 and had received a letter of gratitude from the MoD for his work on information security systems for Russia’s strategic missile forces.

These latest arrests are part of a broader state campaign to dismantle Russia’s vast black market for personal data, a practice known colloquially as probiv (literally, “punching through”). It follows a separate case from mid-July in which seven people were arrested for data trafficking—people with the same names as staff at the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ own Main Information and Analytical Centre, the very department tasked with managing the ministry’s databases.

Both sets of arrests have been made under a newly amended law, Article 272.1 of the Russian Criminal Code, which took effect in late 2024. The legislation introduces severe penalties of up to ten years in prison for data trafficking by organised groups or for actions that result in what the law deems “serious consequences.”

The probiv market operates on two levels: a public-facing market for consumers, and a more exclusive business-to-business (B2B) network for corporate security, private detectives, and debt collectors. The Solaris service, which had been active since the mid-2010s, appears to be part of this B2B network. In 2021, one of its clients was reportedly Nornickel, the world’s largest producer of high-grade nickel and palladium.

The state’s campaign against these services intensified in late 2024 with the new legislation. Since then, authorities have raided the operators of the public-facing Telegram bot Eye of God, while another service, Himera, moved its employees out of Russia to avoid prosecution.