Belarus Arrests Citizen After Telegram Bot Breach Exposes Informants

7 February, 2025 Belarusian Hajun logo. Photo: Ukrainska Pravda The first Belarusian citizen has been arrested by the country's law enforcement after a local monitoring group's Telegram bot was hacked.

According to the Belarusian opposition Telegram channel Digital Intelligence Team, the detainee was an informant for the Belaruski Hajun monitoring group. Digital Intelligence Team reported that Belarusian security forces gained access to the Belaruski Hajun bot's correspondence yesterday. The bot was used to collect information from local residents on Russian troop movements.

Shortly after the data breach, security forces detained the first Belarusian who had provided information through the bot. The detainee is Maksim Nikitenko, a 42-year-old native of Mozyr. In recent years, he worked at the Mozyr Oil Refinery.

Infographic of Russian drones entering Belarusian airspace.

Source: Belarusian Hajun

According to the Digital Intelligence Team, the chatbot did not have protection against viewing messages by new participants. Thus, the Belarusian security forces, having gained access to the old link created in 2022, were able to view the previous messages of the participants. At the same time, the feedback bot kept the unique ID of the users who wrote to it.

The ID in Telegram does not change when you change account settings, which allows you to analyze and de-anonymize the authors of messages. On February 5, 2025, the founder of the project, Belarusian activist Anton Matolka, reported the hacking of the Belaruski Hajun monitoring group's bot and warned the project's informants about the threat to their safety.

The route of movement of the units of the 11th Guards Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Belarus. Source: Belarusian Hajun

"We don't know how much data could have been uploaded during the time the third-party account had access.

I want to say right away that there was a human error in this situation, and this error was mine," Matolko said. On February 7, the Belaruski Gayun Telegram channel posted a message about the termination of the monitoring project. Belaruski Hajun monitoring group was an independent monitoring project that recorded the movements of Russian and Belarusian troops in Belarus.

In particular, in January 2025, the Belaruski Hajun monitoring group reported that Belarus had deployed about 1,500 military personnel to the regions bordering Ukraine, who were withdrawn from there in September-October.

The route of convoys of vehicles, February 20, 2023 Source: Belarusian Hajun

In 2023, Belaruski Hajun monitoring group, along with another online project by Anton Matolka, was recognized as extremist in Belarus.