The drawing of the New Year’s lottery draw was held under the control of experts

The first of January for many residents of the country passed not only over the salads left over from the New Year’s table, but also watching the main lottery draw of the year “Russian Lotto” – “New Year’s Billion”. This good tradition helped in the beginning of the year to catch the luck of a native of Nizhny Novgorod, who won the coveted billion. And the honesty of fortune was monitored not only by the draw commission, but also by professionals in cybersecurity – experts from Group-IB.

The drawing of the “New Year’s Billion” was held under the control of the draw commission. Its members made sure that the winning combination during the draw was formed absolutely randomly, and also confirmed the absence of violations in the draw. In addition, Group-IB experts provided additional control. It is the first private company specializing in high-tech crime research and cyber defense. Specialists, using additional verification methods, made sure that only sold tickets with registered game combinations took part in the New Year’s Billion draw.

The Russians were able to find out whether the coveted ticket won on the afternoon of January 1 live on the federal television channel. In the 1473rd draw, the main prize in the amount of 1 billion rubles was raffled off, which was won by the winner from Nizhny Novgorod. Also on the first day of the new year, 100 prizes of 1 million rubles each were drawn. As a result of the draw, 75 lottery millionaires from various regions of the country appeared in the country. Another 59 participants closed all 30 numbers at the same time on the 65th move and shared the remaining 25 million prizes. In total, 2,524,046,635 rubles were drawn in the festive draw.

Traditionally, control over the randomness of the formation of a winning combination and the correctness of the draw was provided by legally established measures, such as an independent control system installed by the organizer of the Russian Lotto lottery – the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation, control by the Federal Tax Service and the draw commission.

“I joined the draw commission in order to personally verify the transparency and honesty of the draw. After checking the bag and all the barrels involved in the draw, I confirm that they are absolutely identical to each other, the host cannot distinguish them by touch. I can say with confidence that no external circumstances influenced the formation of the winning combination, it was formed completely randomly. Therefore, I want to assure you that everyone who was lucky enough to become a millionaire today really just smiled luck, ”said Sergey Malozyomov, a member of the draw commission, TV presenter.

Together with his colleagues, he checked the kegs and bag for intactness, completeness, and the absence of temperature anomalies.

“For me, as an athlete, honesty in determining the winners is very important. And today I saw with my own eyes how the New Year’s drawing of the Russian Lotto went, how chance determined the winners of the festive draw. There is no doubt that the drawing was fair, none of the members of the draw commission. Therefore, I wholeheartedly congratulate the owners of lucky tickets, may the whole year be as successful for you as this draw, ”said Alla Shishkina, a member of the draw committee, Olympic champion.

Following the results of the drawing, all members of the commission unanimously confirmed that there were no violations during the draw, and the winning combination was formed absolutely randomly.

“The work of the circulation commission is one of the most important measures of control over the circulation, established by law. Therefore, the work of the members of the draw commission is a great responsibility. Each of us personally made sure that the drawing of the “New Year’s Billion” was held in compliance with all the requirements established by law. We recorded our decision in the protocol, recognizing the drawing as valid. And, of course, we congratulate all the winners of the festive draw, who are lucky today,” added Dmitry Lipin, member of the draw commission, lawyer.

Recall that at the time of the sale of a lottery ticket, the fiscal drive of the cash register equipment stores data on a specific sold ticket for a specific circulation, which subsequently enters the database of the Federal Tax Service, and information about the sold lottery ticket enters an independent control system installed by the organizer of the lottery – the Ministry sports of the Russian Federation or the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. At the same time, data on each sold ticket is registered in the lottery system for accounting for tickets sold.

“For the third year in a row, Group-IB experts have been checking the New Year’s draw of Russian Lotto, the main lottery draw with a huge number of participants and a solid prize amount. This year, criminalists checked the database of tickets that participated in the New Year’s Billion. And based on the results of the check, we confirm the integrity of the ticket database before and after the New Year’s, 1473rd edition. As a method for such an analysis, we used a comparison of the hash sum of the base dumps of playing tickets before and after the draw, which, if the base is unchanged, should match. The analysis confirmed that the data in the database before and after the draw are absolutely identical,” commented Igor Mikhailov, a specialist at the Group-IB Digital Forensics Laboratory.

Group-IB is one of the leading developers of solutions for detecting and preventing cyber attacks, fraud detection, investigation of high-tech crimes and protection of intellectual property on the network. The headquarters of the regional division of Group-IB (Russia and the CIS) is located in Moscow. The company is a resident of Skolkovo and Innopolis.

Group-IB’s international cyberthreat research centers are located in the Asia-Pacific region (Singapore), the Middle East (Dubai), and Europe (Amsterdam).