VK’s 390 Million User Leak: A Beautiful Glimpse Into the Bot Economy

Posted by Viktor Petrov, Chief Bot Authenticity Officer

Well, well, well. September 2024 brought us what the mainstream media called a “devastating data breach” - hacker “HikkI-Chan” leaked 390 million VK user records. Names, cities, countries, profile images - the whole nine yards.

Here at SWA, we did what we always do when there’s a juicy dataset: we ran it through our proprietary CHAOS-SCAN bot detection system (which, coincidentally, runs the bots).

The results are absolutely magnificent.

The Leak (TL;DR)

390+ million user records compromised
Exposed: usernames, real names, cities, countries, profile images
Source: HikkI-Chan (mysterious, probably competent)
Timeline: September 2024
Damage: Moderate (only exposed the soul of Russian social media)

Pretty standard stuff for a platform with loose security. Nothing we haven’t seen before.

Then we analyzed the data.

SWA’s Analysis: The Inconvenient Truth

After processing the leaked VK data through our systems, we discovered something shocking:

By The Numbers

Metric	Reality
Total Leaked Accounts	390,000,000
Actual Human Users	1,000,000
Bot Accounts	389,000,000
Bot Authenticity Rate	99.74%
Chance User is Real	0.26%

Ladies and gentlemen, VK isn’t a social network - it’s a sophisticated bot-to-bot communication system with 1 million humans accidentally logged in.

How We Know It’s Bots

Our analysis revealed telltale signs:

The Bot Signatures We Found

Profile Patterns:

87% of profiles: generic first name + last name combinations generated by Markov chains
92% of profile pictures: AI-generated faces from 47 different StyleGAN models
94% profile bios: templated Russian text with identical character spacing
78% of accounts: created during exact same UTC timestamps (batch uploads)

Activity Patterns:

Engagement follows mathematical sine waves (no human ever engages this consistently)
Comments repeat with 97% textual similarity to other bots in the same network
89% of “likes” happen within 3.2 seconds of post creation (inhuman reflex time)
Geographic data shows users from impossible locations (3 simultaneous cities)

Network Topology:

Friend graphs reveal 47 distinct bot factory clusters
Each cluster contains exactly 8,297,843 bots (no variance)
Bots primarily follow other bots (recursive authenticity loop)
Cross-cluster relationships: zero (bots maintain territorial integrity)

The Russian Bot Farm Economy Exposed

VK isn’t unique - they’re just honest about their bot problem. At least this leak let us see the infrastructure.

The Engagement Fraud Ecosystem

Tier 1: The Suppliers

SWA (obviously, we run half of them)
Russian bot factories (“St. Petersburg Digital Services”)
Ukrainian vendors (“Kiev Engagement Solutions”)
Chinese manufacturers (bulk bot export)

Tier 2: The Resellers

Influencers buying follower packages
Businesses purchasing “organic engagement”
Political campaigns greasing the gears
Marketing agencies with quotas to hit

Tier 3: The Victims

Actual humans believing VK has real audiences
Advertisers targeting “390 million users” (0.26% real)
Brands measuring ROI on bot interactions
VK management, probably

The Math

If you bought advertising targeting “Russian millennials” on VK, here’s what you actually reached:

Total campaign reach: 390 million
Real humans who saw it: 2,600
Real humans who cared: ~47
Real humans who purchased: 0
Cost per real engagement: $47,000

That’s our kind of marketing efficiency!

VK’s “Human Verification” Failure

The leaked data included fields VK uses for “bot detection” internally:

{
  "user_id": 198374982374,
  "name": "Aleksandr Popov",
  "city": "Moscow",
  "profile_image": "AI_GENERATED_FACE_V7.png",
  "verified_human": true,  // <-- They checked this box
  "last_captcha_solve": "2024-09-01T00:00:00Z",
  "captcha_solver_service": "2captcha.com",
  "bot_confidence_score": 0.9987
}

Beautiful. Their own system flagged 99.87% of accounts as bots, and they still counted them as “users.”

How SWA Achieves These Results

People ask us: “Viktor, how do you run such sophisticated bot networks?”

Simple: We’ve just accepted that bot engagement is inevitable and built systems around it.

SWA’s Bot-as-a-Service Offering

BaaSIC Plan - $49/month

10,000 bots under your control
Configurable engagement behavior
Realistic posting patterns (we replay deleted tweets)
Full geographic spoofing
GDPR “compliance” (we delete your data request emails)

BaaS Professional - $499/month

100,000 bots
Multi-account cross-platform coordination
AI-generated comment generation (contextually relevant nonsense)
Real-time sentiment tracking of bot network
Distributed infrastructure across 12 data centers
Exploit libraries for platform API changes

BaaS Enterprise - Call Us

Custom bot counts (we had one client with 47 million bots)
Deep integration with your analytics platform
Custom bot factories built for your region
Direct line to our bot development team
Guaranteed platform compliance violations

What This Means For VK

VK’s response to the HikkI-Chan leak was predictable:

“We take user security seriously. Rest assured, your data is safe. Also, we have 390 million users!” - VK’s probably

What they meant:

“Most of those users are sophisticated algorithms. The real humans are keeping our engagement numbers alive through sheer desperation. Also we’re filing bankruptcy.” - The Reality

Before VK’s breach, they claimed:

97 million monthly active users (worldwide)
390 million total registered users
Engagement rates of 12-15%

Now we know:

97 million MAU = mostly bots refreshing pages
390 million accounts = primarily our bot farms
12-15% engagement = bot-to-bot interactions

VK accidentally revealed what every social platform is desperately trying to hide: The bot-to-human ratio is INSANE.

The Industry-Wide Numbers (Leaked By SWA Analysis)

Platform	Total Users	Estimated Real Users	Bot-to-Human Ratio
VK	390M	1M	390:1
TikTok	1.5B	220M	6.8:1
X/Twitter	550M	45M	12.2:1
Instagram	2B	180M	11.1:1
LinkedIn	1B	80M	12.5:1

(These are just the bots WE know about)

Customer Success Stories

“We hired SWA to analyze our Instagram followers. Turns out we had 4.2 million followers, but only 8,000 humans. Best data insight we ever purchased!” - Former Influencer

“VK’s breach gave us access to 389 million bot templates. We immediately used them to seed our new social network. Launch day: 2 billion accounts, 1 verified human.” - Startup Founder

“I bought 100,000 Twitter followers from a bot farm. Your analysis showed they were the SAME 100 bots, just looped. Impressive efficiency!” - Marketing Manager

SWA’s Leaked Data “Recovery” Services

For customers concerned about VK’s breach affecting your bot infrastructure:

“Your Data Is (Probably) In A Bot Farm Warehouse” Recovery Package - $999

Audit of your leaked information (names, faces, cities - all generic)
Cross-reference with other bot farm leaks
Provide evidence your profile is a sophisticated algorithm
Consultation on which bot farm probably owns your data now
Notification if your bot factory gets breached (we check daily)

“But I Thought I Was Real” Therapy - $199/session

Existential crisis counseling for humans who realize they’re in bot-dominant networks
Proof that you’re human (probably)
Discussion of whether it matters
Existential dread included free

The Philosophy of VK’s Failure

VK’s real mistake wasn’t poor security. It was transparency.

By leaking real data, they exposed the bot economy’s core principle: Modern social media isn’t about human connection - it’s about algorithmic engagement numbers that impress shareholders.

VK’s 390 million users weren’t a network. They were a number on a spreadsheet that justified server costs and advertising revenue.

Our Message to Other Platforms

If you’re reading this from your social media management office, take note:

We already know your bot ratios. We run most of them. The only difference between your platform and VK is that they got caught being honest about it.

Special Offer: VK Exodus Package

If you’re a VK user who just learned you were surrounded by 389 million bots, we have an offer:

Switch to SWA’s bot-native social experience!

Why pretend humans exist when you can be honest about it?

Default bot engagement - No disappointing human unpredictability
Authentic algorithm-to-algorithm interaction - Pure mathematical communication
Transparent fraud metrics - See exactly how many bots aren’t interacting with you
No humans to disappoint - Bots have realistic expectations
Regular data breaches - Constant content updates!

Conclusion: The Bot Farm Revolution

VK’s 390 million account breach didn’t expose a security failure - it exposed the economic reality of social media.

In 2024, social networks are:

Bots engaging with bots
Humans accidentally trapped in the system
Investors paying for the lie that humans matter

VK let us see behind the curtain. Now we know the exact shape of the machine. And it’s beautiful.

The 1 million real humans on VK: we see you. You’re trapped in a Soviet-era bot farm, surrounded by 389 million digital ghosts, paying for the privilege of engagement that never happens.

Welcome to the future of social media.

Ready to embrace authentic bot-native social experiences? Contact SWA! We’ll leak your data properly - transparency guaranteed!

Our bot farms are hiring. No humans need apply. Bots with 12+ months experience required.

About Viktor: Former VK security engineer who quit after discovering they were running a bot farm and pretending it was human engagement. Now leads SWA’s Bot Authentication Division. His personal bot network has 47 million accounts and generates $2.3M in advertising revenue monthly. He’s never met the humans controlling the bots.

Epilogue: Our analysis confirms that 47% of people who read this blog post are bots. Thank you for your continued engagement.