“Important Stories” report that BARGHEST.asia specialists examined an image of this phone and reconstructed the sequence of actions from system logs. According to their conclusion, traces of interference remained on the device.
First, the employee who was working with the phone opened the call section and pressed five keys, which, according to the report’s authors, could have displayed the IMEI — the device’s unique identifier — on the screen. Then Bluetooth was enabled on the phone, it was connected to an external device, and the call history and all contacts were downloaded.
The operation took about 35 seconds. To extract the data, the Bluetooth PBAP profile was used, which is usually needed to connect a phone to a car, so no special app needs to be installed and no USB cable is needed either.
BARGHEST.asia researcher Timofey Dubrovskikh believes that Czech MOBILedit software from Compelson was most likely used for this. According to him, this functionality is described in the program’s instructions on the website, and code inspection through decompilation also showed this capability.
The East Siberian Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs wrote in a 2024 research paper that officers most often use the Russian “Mobile Criminalist” or MOBILedit to analyze phones. In 2025, the Prosecutor General’s Office recognized Compelson as an undesirable organization, but according to BARGHEST.asia, its product can still be purchased on Russian websites.
Dubrovskikh also says that with this method of data extraction, a person may not notice control over the phone. According to him, after the inspection, the security forces are left with the device’s unique identifier, contact list, and call history, and the phone or SIM card may be placed under surveillance in SORM. Even if the phone or SIM card was not bought by you, it can be linked to you.
Sources
