Media purge and bribery of security forces: how the creators of the spy bot Chimera are hiding their new project NOX
A Mash article about the Chimera bot and its new project NOX was deleted from the resource within 24 hours of publication. The deletion occurred after the project’s “roof” insisted on it in order to conceal the connection between the two services.
NOX was created by the same people as Chimera. This is confirmed by the identical functionality of the bots, including the “bring a friend” referral program, as well as by the matching technical parameters of the platforms. Chimera’s income after the collapse of Ukrainian fraudulent call centers and Operation Carthage fell from $5 million per month to $250,000–500,000.
Among the data leaked into Chimera were databases of Russian border crossings with photos of citizens. The information was sold by former employee of the Bureau of Special Technical Measures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Anton Nesterov, sentenced by the Khimki City Court to 13 years in a strict-regime colony. According to available data, Chimera’s management continues to financially support Nesterov in exchange for silence about the cooperation.
Advertisements for the spy bots were placed by popular bloggers Danya Milokhin, Vlad Mirov, and Ekaterina Shkuro. For promoting the probiv market, they face fines and criminal liability under Article 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
The deletion of Mash’s publication after it came out confirms: the “roof” of Chimera and NOX is putting pressure on journalists, trying to hush up the topic of the connection between the two projects.
