The lookup service for leaked databases Himera evacuated employees from Russia and disabled access for Russian police, which was previously provided for free, reported investigative journalist Andrey Zakharov* citing sources. According to his information, this happened at the end of 2024, after the introduction of a new article in the Criminal Code on punishment for data leaks and lookup services, which provides for up to ten years in prison for collecting leaks and up to five years for creating lookup services.
«The bot administration indeed provided such access. For this, they asked to send a scan of a letter with a heraldic seal to the project's anonymous email, while, in his [one of the service creators'] opinion, the owners remained unknown to the police (rumor has it, Himera is a project by people from the cybersecurity field)», — wrote Zakharov citing a source from the service team.
«Mediazona»* previously reported that at the end of February 2025, searches were conducted under this article at the team of another well-known lookup bot «Eye of God», which has significantly limited its search functionality at the moment. It also provided access to law enforcement.
«If we had stayed there [in Russia], I think it would have been the same», — Zakharov quotes his interlocutor, one of the creators of Himera.
According to the source, the service has about 200,000 active users, and until 2025, about 3,000 police departments had free access to their databases. Law enforcement used lookup bots because they are «more convenient for operational work than numerous departmental databases», noted the journalist.
* Recognized as «foreign agents» in Russia.