A group of hackers acting under acronym “Shaltai-Boltai” (Humpty Dumpty) is ready to sell the email archive of a Russian official for 400 bitcoins. The email archive may (or may not) belong to the head of Kingisepp district in Saint-Petersburg region Viktor Geshele.

Hackers are using jocker.buzz site to sell the archive. They want to sell it at auction in two weeks. The starting price is 110 bitcoins. The hackers are also ready to sell the archive immediately for 400 bitcoins.

According to the Russian description of the archive, it includes 2,800 characters with confidential information on the head of Kingisepp district. The hackers claim that Geshele is an “unofficial businessman”. If proved, this claim may cause problems for the Russian official.

“Shaltai-Boltai” hacker group gained some fame in Russian media after a series of well-organised attacks against email and social media accounts of top officials. In 2014, they hacked the Twitter account of Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev and published a letter of Deputy Prime Minister Arkadiy Dvorkovich. Later “Shaltai” published phone messages of another Russian official Timur Prokopenko.

The group of hackers embrace bitcoins. This January, they were ready to sell emails of Medvedev’s press-attaché Natalia Timakova for 150 bitcoins. 

Political analysts say that the group is unlikely to be independent and helps some fraction in Kremlin to fight the rivals. In one of the few interviews, representatives of “Shaltai” claimed that they were independent.

Roman Korizky