Real Identity of Hacker Who Sold LinkedIn, Dropbox Databases Revealed
Nov 21, 2018
The real identity of Tessa88—the notorious hacker tied to several high-profile cyber attacks including the LinkedIn , DropBox  and MySpace  mega breaches—has been revealed as Maksim Vladimirovich Donakov  (Максим Владимирович Донаков), a resident of Penza, Russian Federation.   In early 2016, a hacker with pseudonym Tessa88 emerged online offering stolen databases from some of the biggest social media websites in the world, including LinkedIn, MySpace, VKontakte  (vk.com), Dropbox, Rambler , and Twitter , for sale in various underground hacking forums.   The stolen data, taken years ago from several social media sites, included more than half a billion username and password combinations, which were then used in phishing, account takeover, and other cyber attacks.   Though Tessa88's profile was active for a few months between February and May 2016, the OPSEC analysis revealed that the same person was involved in various cybercriminal activities since as early as 2012 under different...