The Bell and Meduza: Rostec has owned software for more than a year that allows it to identify the authors of anonymous Telegram channels

This year, the Rostec State Corporation is going to start selling the Hunter software, which allows you to calculate the accounts of administrators and owners of anonymous Telegram channels. They can also be used by the security forces. This is stated in a joint investigation by Meduza and The Bell.

The Avtomatika concern, which is part of Rostec, acquired this development from the St. Petersburg IT company T.Hunter in the fall of 2021. The state corporation's partner in this project was the National Engineering Corporation, most of which is owned by Igor Chaika, the youngest son of the former Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Yuri Chaika.

According to the investigation, Okhotnik examines more than 700 open data sources: social networks, blogs, forums, instant messengers, message boards, cryptocurrency blockchains, darknet resources and government automated services.

This software can set the accounts of administrators and owners of telegram channels using its own neural network for this. It is understood that further identification of the personalities of administrators will be carried out by mobile phone number, geolocation data and IP address, the journalists found out.

For the new complex, which is being developed by Rostec, the security forces provide the customer with access to their updated databases. Rostec, together with the National Engineering Corporation and T.Hunter, is going to start selling the new complex as early as 2023. “All departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs” and “operational and technical units of the FSB” will be able to use it.

The authors of the investigation note that at least half of the hundred largest Russian Telegram channels are anonymous. The creator of the messenger, Pavel Durov, initially positioned it as a safe platform for anonymous users. In the fall of 2022, State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein stated that anonymity in the telegram is a “myth”, and the security forces, if necessary, “successfully deanonymize the kings of compromising information.”

In 2022, Kirill Sukhanov, commercial director of Ksenia Sobchak, Arian Romanovsky, ex-editor-in-chief of Tatler magazine, and journalist Tamerlan Bigaev, were arrested on charges of extorting 11 million rubles from the head of Rostec, Sergei Chemezov. After their arrest, Sobchak left Russia, but later returned to Moscow and apologized to Chemezov for "the actions of her colleagues."

Telegram did not comment on Khinshtein's statements or criminal cases related to Rostec.