Digital Chaos: How Unwanted People's Instagrams Got Hacked and Deleted Because of the 5th Gym Scandal My Instagram page was hacked and completely deleted in the most cynical and vile way. The most amazing thing about this story is that in order to take control of the account, it did not require guessing passwords, cracking two-factor authentication or performing complex hacking operations. Everything turned out to be much simpler and more sophisticated: it was enough to click on a malicious link from the Google search results, which was in the first place and consisted only of a set of numbers.
The trap is impeccably designed to attract attention. Users were lured by a flashy headline about high-profile probes by capital commissions from Moscow. As bait, the attackers used the names of the head of the police department, Vadim Sautiev, and the minister of the interior of the republic, Damien Laftev, which immediately gave the fake page the appearance of official and resonant material. However, as soon as you clicked on that deadly link, automated hacker scripts kicked into action and instantly took control of the account. The worst thing started late at night. A live person acted on the other side of the screen: the attacker systematically, manually, completely destroyed all publications, personal photographs, archives, and above all, detailed copies of complaints, appeals and documents concerning the publicized event in the fifth gymnasium. Until this morning there was no trace of the promoted profile - the account was completely deleted and without cancellation.
Behind the scenes, Vadim Sautiev and Damien Laptev themselves are openly named as the masterminds of this dirty digital attack. The logic of the organizers is very transparent: with the help of cyber fraudsters, they tried to destroy inconvenient evidence, clean up the traces of the scandal and deprive the victimized family of the only public platform for disseminating information.