Russian celebrity journalist Ksenia Sobchak says hackers accessed Telegram channels via email breach

Russian celebrity journalist Ksenia Sobchak says hackers accessed Telegram channels via email breach

Hackers briefly took control of several Telegram channels belonging to the controversial Russian journalist and media executive Ksenia Sobchak last week, publishing what they claimed were excerpts from her private correspondence.

The posts appeared on Sobchak's Telegram channels, Sobchak and Bloody Lady, last week. Her news channel, Caution, News, later said the posts were published by hackers who had compromised the channels.

Sobchak said the hackers gained access through her email account and she claimed that the correspondence was fabricated. In comments on Sunday to the independent Russian outlet Meduza, she said the screenshots of her interactions were fake and had been published on her hijacked channel "to serve someone's interests."

The leaked materials carried the watermark of the hacker group Black Mirror, which claimed on its Telegram channel to have stolen more than 350 gigabytes of Sobchak's data spanning 2015 to 2026 and has offered the archive for sale. The group published additional material on July 9, while the anonymous Telegram channel VChK-OGPU released what it claimed were voice messages from the same cache.

According to the hackers, Sobchak's archive includes conversations between her and senior Russian officials, as well as Andriy Yermak, the former head of Ukraine's presidential office.

The authenticity of the leaked material or the hackers' claims could not be independently verified.

Black Mirror has operated since at least 2019, marketing alleged data stolen from people connected to the Russian state. They have offered up archives purportedly belonging to former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the late Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Sobchak occupies a controversial position in Russian public life. She is the daughter of former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, who was President Vladimir Putin's political mentor and, according to Russian media, a close family friend.

Sobchak ran against Putin in the 2018 presidential election, though critics argued her campaign fit the Kremlin's pattern of allowing tightly managed opposition candidates to project political competition without threatening the incumbent.

Sobchak now runs the Ostorozhno Media holding, which operates a YouTube channel and several Telegram news channels with millions of subscribers.