Tech
It’s a much, much smaller, already shared set of publicly scraped info.
Accounts claiming ties to the hacking collective Anonymous announced the release of 10 terabytes of data that expose Russia, President Donald Trump, and corruption across the globe.
Featured Video
Which would be big, if true. But the data doesn’t match the claim.
On Tuesday, the X user @YourAnonTV, an account with nearly 492,000 followers, asserted that a data cache containing “information on all businesses operating in Russia, all Kremlin assets in the West, pro-Russian officials, and more,” was released online.
🚨JUST IN: The Anonymous collective has released 10TB of leaked data, including information on all businesses operating in Russia, all Kremlin assets in the West, pro-Russian officials, and more #OpRussia #Anonymous #SlavaUkraïni 🇺🇦 https://t.co/JG0Is5DJvJ pic.twitter.com/8Ru1KbAKxE
— Anonymous TV 🇺🇦 (@YourAnonTV) April 15, 2025
Advertisement
The claim was quickly circulated by other prominent accounts including @YourAnonCentral, a user known for spreading sensationalized and false claims to their 5.2 million followers, who added that Trump had been swept up in the leak as well.
“In defense of Ukraine Anonymous has released 10TB of leaked data on all businesses operating in Russia, all Kremlin assets in the West, pro-Russian officials, Donald Trump, and more,” the account wrote.
In defense of Ukraine Anonymous has released 10TB of leaked data on all businesses operating in Russia, all Kremlin assets in the West, pro-Russian officials, Donald Trump, and more. 🇺🇦 #OpRussia https://t.co/Z1wKhjcSUz pic.twitter.com/Hod9qGBi8l
— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) April 15, 2025
A link to the supposed archive, titled “Leaked Data of corrupt officials,” shows a compressed file less than 19 gigabytes in size. The source of the alleged hack appears to be a little-known X user with the handle @CyberUnknown45.
Advertisement
In one of their most recent posts, @CyberUnknown45 claimed that the total size of the hacked data had actually increased to 11.5 terabytes.
A standard book page holds around 2,000 characters or 2,000 bytes of data. For comparison, 11.5 terabytes of data would fill up 5.75 billion pages.
11,5 TERABYTES🤩👹🔥 https://t.co/SLjkfP0QTa pic.twitter.com/boZHk4xQf1
— CyberUnknown (@CyberUnknown45) April 15, 2025
But it turns out the alleged leak isn’t new. @CyberUnknown45 has been posting about the cache as far back as December 2023.
Advertisement
Over their X timeline, @CyberUnknown45 provides regular updates to data he’s added to the cache, which largely appears to be already public information scraped from websites as well as hacks and leaks from others.
Added leaked data of 4 new targets: 3 News Publications(it includes both their official sites and Twitter accounts): The New York Times, Politico, Forbes. Also added leaked data of Twitter account of foreign minister of Austria Alexander Schallenberghttps://t.co/wrP6kEHwbl
— CyberUnknown (@CyberUnknown45) December 1, 2023
Data experts who have examined portions of the archive agree that the characterizations currently being made online are highly inaccurate.
Emma Best, co-founder of the journalism collective DDoSecrets, the world’s largest public library of hacked and leaked information, noted in a post on Bluesky that folders in the archive included odd names such as “Dominoes pizza.”
Advertisement
– Claims impossible data without explanation- Releases less than 2% of what they say they have- Data looks like a scrape of existing releases- High quality folders like “China government site” and “Dominoes pizza”… Do I even need to say it?
— emma best 🏳️🌈🏴☠️🏳️⚧️ Mxy (@emma.best) 2025-04-16T11:08:00.770Z
Best also examined folders that alleged to contain “leaked data” on Trump, ex-Republican lawmaker Matt Gaetz, and rapper Kanye West.
The files, which included scrapes of the trio’s social media profiles, showed useless information such as the IP address for instagram.com.
“High quality stuff, y’all,” Best wrote. “Can’t believe they leaked that <checks notes> Kanye’s Instagram is hosted by Instagram.c- Really? I have to waste my time debunking this shit???”
Advertisement
High quality stuff, y’allCan’t believe they leaked that <checks notes> Kanye’s Instagram is hosted by Instagram.c- Really? I have to waste my time debunking this shit???
— emma best 🏳️🌈🏴☠️🏳️⚧️ Mxy (@emma.best) 2025-04-16T12:29:00.883Z
The Daily Dot reached out to @CyberUnknown45 to inquire about the claims online but did not hear back.
Either way, the vast majority of the data is neither new nor sensitive in nature, making the claims online wildly inaccurate.
Advertisement
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletterhere. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.