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 a resident of Penza, Russian Federation.
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.After exploring several confidential sources, Penza records, and Russian crime database, researchers find Tessa88 as Maksim Vladimirovich Donakov (date of birth: 02/07/1989), whose persona matches with the YouTube username ‘Donakov,’ Mitsubishi Lancer and person revealed in Imgur picture.
https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/tessa88-russian-hacker.html
But neither Tessa88, nor Peace_of_Mind, were the actual hackers who breached these companies. Both have said in multiple interviews given to news media outlets, including to this reporter, that they only acted as middlemen for a larger group of hackers who performed the actual hacks.