Debunking Russian fakes. No, AKLIROG didn’t hack FBI’s database of people under witness protection program 

News spread that hackers from the group AKLIROG stole a database with persons under a witness protection program from the FBI. We’ve figured out it’s true. 

What happened? 

A video claiming that the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed the supposed fact of database theft with data about persons under the witness protection program spread online on Telegram. 

The video says that a hacker group called AKLIROG released what they say is a list of 200,000 people under witness protection to Darknet, aiming to sell it for $50 million. But the post says hackers are ready to sell the database to anyone, even back to the FBI, with a guarantee that it will not be released for sale again. 

Video also says that the founders of AKLIROG hacker group, Yevhen Kramarenko and Mykola Lysenko have been wanted by Interpol since 2023. 

This news was spread on Telegram channels Tsargrad (“Царьград ТВ“) (archive), Zametki (“Zаметки.РФ 🇷🇺”) (archive), “V karbiuratore kondensat (“В карбюраторе конденсат 🇷🇺”) (archive). The Center for Countering Disinformation and Ukraine’s SBU cyber departments put these channels on the List of tools for spreading hostile disinformation.  

Analysis 

A logo of Bloomberg is placed in the upper right corner of the video, so, first of all, we went to check the company’s official resources: its website and accounts on Х, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

We didn’t find the video spread by pro-Russian channels on either of these platforms. 

We also did not find a similar format for a news presentation from Bloomberg—their videos don’t use slides accompanied by captions.

After comparing the videos published on Bloomberg’s official resources and videos shared on Telegram, we identified the following discrepancies:

• Bloomberg uses different fonts for videos on its website and social media pages than those used in the videos distributed by pro-Russian Telegram channels;

• Bloomberg doesn’t insert logos on its social media videos; in the long videos published on its website, they use the “B” logo, which is significantly different from the one used in a Telegram post.

For the next step, we checked all the press releases published during the last month on the official website of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and found no mention of the list of people under witness protection program being leaked. 

We also didn’t find any news about the theft of the FBI witness database via search engines. There is no information about this in the press or social media.  

We also didn’t find any information about AKLIROG in a Google search. The only links that mention the hackers lead to pro-Russian resources that, consequently, contain the news about the alleged theft of the FBI database. 

Moreover, we didn’t find supposed founders of the AKLIROG hacker group, Yevhen Kramarenko and Mykola Lysenko, on Interpol’s website as well. 

So, we’re facing another fake piece manufactured by Russian propaganda, with an imagined hacker group and a fictional story about database theft created to discredit the American FBI. 

Conclusion: Fake 

Author: Viktoria Horak