‘All brakes are off’: Russia’s attempt to rein in illicit market for leaked data backfires

Russian state has tolerated parallel probiv market for its convenience but now Ukrainian spies are exploiting it

Russia is scrambling to rein in the country's sprawling illicit market for leaked personal data, a shadowy ecosystem long exploited by investigative journalists, police and criminal groups.

For more than a decade, Russia's so-called probiv market - a term derived from the verb to pierce" or to punch into a search bar" - has operated as a parallel information economy built on a network of corrupt officials, traffic police, bank employees and low-level security staff willing to sell access to restricted government or corporate databases.