01 NoName057(16) published personal data on 18 EU politicians, police officials, and journalists it calls hostile to Moscow.
02 The group offered cryptocurrency bounties for more sensitive information targets and their family members.
03 The doxxing appears linked to Operation Eastwood, which disrupted the group’s botnet and took over 100 servers offline.
04 Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said he would not be intimidated after his data appeared online.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai , reviewed by Cybernews staff.
NoName057(16), a pro-Kremlin hacktivist group, has published the personal data of 18 high-profile European Union politicians and law enforcement officials it considers hostile to Moscow. Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, is among the victims.
The hacking group published the list of 18 people on a fairly new dark web page, available only through Tor since late October.
Alongside the officials’ personal data, NoName057(16) also posted an offer of cryptocurrency bounties for anyone who can provide additional sensitive information on the targets and their family members.
The targets include Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, the Eurojust president Michael Schmid, Europol European Cybercrime Centre head Edvardas Šileris, German Federal Police (BKA) president Holger Münch, and Italian Postal Police chief Ivano Gabrielli.
Three German journalists who have investigated Russian hacker gangs and influence operations – Sergej Maier, Michael Alexander Martens, and Angelique Geray – have also been doxxed.
Here is the list of citizens hostile to the Russian Federation, whom we are interested in obtaining information. For a fee, NoName057(16) said on its website.
Each victim has their own profile: email, landline and cell phone numbers, Telegram addresses, and social media profiles.
Their private lives are collected in a file and made available to anyone who accesses the site. According to ANSA , the Italian news agency, the officials’ resumes and addresses also appear.
It looks like the list focuses entirely on European figures involved in investigating Russian cybercrime and supporting Ukraine, which was invaded in February 2022.
The doxxing also seems like a direct retaliation for Operation Eastwood, an international law enforcement sweep in 2025 when twelve countries, together with Europol and Eurojust, shut down NoName057(16)’s botnet.
As per a Europol press release , more than 100 servers were taken offline. Searches were carried out in Germany, Latvia, Spain, Italy, Czechia, Poland, and France, and a thousand supporters of the group were warned of possible criminal consequences.
After his personal data was published on the dark web, Tajani soon said on X: “My response is very simple: I will not be intimidated in any way.”
Tajani also posted a picture with the new family dog, writing: “I want to give the pro-Russian hackers who spy on my life a piece of information. From today, there’s a new guardian in the Tajani household: dear Argo, welcome to the family!”
All bark, little bite
People acting for NoName057(16) are mainly Russian-speaking sympathizers who use automated tools to carry out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. They are motivated by ideology and rewards.
However, Western intelligence agencies claim the group has clear links to the Russian state, which uses hackers as instruments of its hybrid activities.
However, Western intelligence agencies claim the group has clear links to the Russian state which uses hackers as instruments of its hybrid activities.
“These hacktivist groups play a key role in Russia’s cyber apparatus, conducting operations that support Moscow’s strategic goals while providing a layer of plausible deniability that obscures the full extent of the Kremlin’s involvement,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies said last year .
Specifically, NoName057(16) has not been very successful lately. The group is very active and boastful on Telegram, but DarkOwl, a cybersecurity company, recently assessed that short-duration DDoS campaigns by NoName057(16) are not really impactful at all.
For instance, the group claimed responsibility last week for the hacking spree that crippled industrial refrigerators across European supermarkets. But at least some cyber experts don’t believe them .
“Like other hacktivist actors, NoName057(16) tends to exaggerate the impact of their activities. So taking credit for one of the most discussed campaigns definitely won’t hurt,” wrote Oleg Shakirov, an independent Russian cybersecurity analyst.
Even the latest stunt is probably just that, the Cybernews research team says. According to the researchers, most of the posted information is public either way, "so it's hard to count this as a 'doxx' as they're targeting public figures.
Still, information could be used for harassment, and personal email addresses could be cross-referenced against data breaches in attempts to perform credential stuffing or gain additional, more sensitive data such as addresses, researchers say.
The full story
This article is one source in a clustered incident — the cluster page carries the summary, timeline and every other outlet covering it.
