Hacker convicted of hacking and blackmail involving explicit images is running counterintelligence for the Tisza Party

According to court documents obtained by Átlátszó, M.T., alias “Buddha,” blackmailed someone using explicit images taken from the victim’s computer, demanded and received a ransom in exchange for not publishing them online, and was consequently sentenced to a suspended prison term. We understand that over the past two years, dozens of volunteers and staff members have been removed from the Tisza Party based on allegations of espionage presented by “Buddha,” and now he is being considered for an important position at the Ministry of the Interior, where the IT specialist with a tainted past would have access to sensitive data.

“Watch us, hold us accountable!” In his inauguration speech on Saturday, Prime Minister Péter Magyar promised to restore press freedom. His father, István Magyar, added to this in a statement to 24.hu, sending a message to the press: “Criticize this government relentlessly as well.” So let’s get started: we sent a long list of questions regarding the topics covered in this article to the Tisza Party and to Gábor Pósfai, the designated Minister of the Interior, as early as last week, but despite the lofty promises regarding the treatment of the press, we have received no response from anyone.

According to court documents obtained by Átlátszó, M.T. blackmailed someone in 2008 using sexually explicit photos taken from the victim’s computer, demanding and receiving 300,000 forints in exchange for not publishing the sexually explicit images of the victim—which he had stolen—on the internet. For this reason, the Budapest Metropolitan Court found him guilty in 2014 of the crimes of blackmail and computer fraud, and sentenced him to a one-year suspended prison term and payment of damages, a ruling that has become final.

According to the facts established in the first- and second-instance judgments, in 2008, M.T. hacked into the victim’s IWIW profile and, by changing the email address, locked the victim out of it. He then sent an email to the victim from the address [email protected], attaching “sexually explicit” photos obtained from the victim’s computer, stating that if the victim did not want them published on his IWIW profile, he must pay 300,000 forints. The victim paid the requested amount in two installments to the bank account opened by M.T.

M.T. denied his guilt throughout the trial and offered a convoluted explanation for the events, but the court found him guilty in both the first and second instances of the crime of extortion, as well as of a crime against an information system. As a result, in 2014, he was definitively sentenced to one year of suspended imprisonment and ordered to pay damages.

Witch hunt in the Tisza Party

In July 2024, M.T. approached the Tisza Party with a cybersecurity proposal. An IT expert who had been volunteering there—and who had already prepared the cybersecurity plans, supplementing them with a risk analysis—deemed the proposal to be of poor quality and judged M.T.’s background and references to be risky. Vice President Márk Radnai then labeled the individual a spy within the organization; the individual handed over the incomplete cyber defense plans to his colleagues and left.

The plans drawn up by the IT specialist who left the company included a list of cybersecurity experts, one of whom was later removed from his position at his workplace at the time because of their involvement. Our source also pointed out that the Discord and Tisza Világ data breaches occurred while “Buddha” was in charge of IT security, meaning that the cybersecurity system he had set up was, to put it mildly, not functioning at the expected level.

Another source of ours had been involved in the party’s work since September 2024, serving as an “HR support” staff member. Part of their responsibilities included vetting new applicants based on information available from open sources. He was declared a spy and dismissed at the end of 2024 after becoming suspicious of M.T.’s activities, who, according to him, had dismissed dozens of loyal volunteers from the organization on charges such as being “Fidesz agents,” created a paranoid atmosphere, and “treated women immorally.”

A third source of ours also mentions the treatment of women; they recall that plans were made to hold M.T. accountable for the alleged harassment of a female volunteer, which was then overshadowed by the “Henry case.” Átlátszó also contacted the woman allegedly involved in the harassment case, who neither confirmed nor denied our information: she directed us to the Tisza Party’s press office, which did not respond to any of our questions regarding this matter.

We also spoke with a person involved who, due to the timing, even considers it possible that M.T. himself “fabricated” the “Henry” case in some way to regain trust within the party: the infamous exchange of messages took place on an app called Session between “Henry” and “Gundalf,” where users cannot be searched for by name, phone number, or email address, but rather require a special code that only the person in question can provide.

In addition to them, we spoke with several other former Tisza volunteers who were expelled from the party apparatus after being accused of being “spies, agents, or traitors,” and the party leadership removed the accused from the organization without informing them of the circumstances deemed suspicious or giving them a chance to defend themselves against the allegations.

“Buddha” attempted to import intelligence equipment as early as 2019

According to documents obtained by Átlátszó, M.T. commissioned a legal opinion from a Budapest law firm in 2019 regarding the possibilities of distributing in Hungary two IT products that, according to the opinion, qualified as intelligence/military technology equipment; these devices would have been distributed by a company he founded in the United Kingdom called Stohastik Ltd. For this reason, he had already come to the attention of the state counterintelligence agency well before the Tisza Party emerged on the scene.

This is important because the “Henry” scandal, which erupted in the heat of the election campaign, was framed in radically different ways by the independent and pro-government press: Direkt36’s investigative article and the accompanying interview with Police Captain Bence Szabó suggested that the state secret service had launched a politically motivated operation against the Tisza Party’s IT specialists under a fabricated pretext to compromise the party’s IT system, while government communications, on the other hand, attempted to explain the story as a “Ukrainian/Tisza espionage case” before the election.

The reality, however, appears to be more complicated than either version this time. As we reported in a previous article, it is highly unlikely that the professional staff of the Constitution Protection Office were behind the attacker who approached the young Tisza Party IT specialist “Gundalf,” planning to hack the Tisza Party and messaging under the pseudonym “Henry.”

According to information obtained by Átlátszó, it could have been done by a highly paid private unit, whose members were not new to this line of work: for years, they had been working against the political opposition using illegal, secret service methods.

According to our source at the Constitution Protection Office, however, the state intelligence service had several legitimate reasons to monitor “Buddha” and “Gundalf,” ranging from the criminal case involving explicit images to the import of intelligence equipment, the acquisition of hidden cameras, and attempts to be recruited abroad—which “Gundalf” later claimed was disinformation—to the investigation of “Henry’s” identity and role.

This state operation was not necessarily intended to “bring down the Tisza Party”; according to the experts we interviewed, in such cases the secret service investigates ex officio and must also look for spies and attempts at influence within opposition parties.

Can a hacker become the best counterintelligence agent?

In the “Henry” case—a scandal that caused a major stir before the election and left the Office for the Protection of the Constitution with its credibility in tatters, having become a tool and/or a target of politics— and, more generally, in the politically motivated secret surveillance cases of the Orbán era, will surely be clarified by a thorough investigation conducted by the new government.

As will the question of whether, over the past sixteen years, those carrying out covert operations against the political opposition had access to information from state intelligence agencies or other internal affairs records (we fear this is the case, and have seen signs pointing to it), exactly who was continuously leaking information and databases from the Tisza Party prior to the election, as well as what illegal video and audio recordings were made to discredit or compromise the Tisza Party—and previously other opposition parties and their politicians—who made them, how they ended up in the hands of government propaganda, or who has since become vulnerable to blackmail because of them.

Furthermore, we can hopefully also find out whether the suspicions raised by the Constitution Protection Office regarding “Buddha” and “Gundalf” were well-founded, and who the still-unknown “Henry” actually is.

Gábor Pósfai, the incoming Minister of the Interior, promised all of this during his parliamentary hearing, as well as that they will not only investigate but also make public the politically motivated secret surveillance operations ordered since 2010.

Something is being kept secret at the Tisza Party

However, according to sources in the fields of national security and cybersecurity contacted by Átlátszó, it is not certain that the conduct of this important investigation should be entrusted to someone who may have been the subject of a legitimate, non-politically motivated investigation by the state secret service, and/or who may be involved in or responsible for data leaks at Tisza, or who may be in possession of incriminating information or recordings regarding Tisza politicians, and therefore cannot be considered an outsider or impartial in this matter.

We understand that, despite all this, the Tisza Party now intends to give M.T. an important position in the Ministry of the Interior, where he would have access to sensitive data; according to our unconfirmed information, he might even be entrusted with the supervision of the civilian intelligence services.

Last week, we sent a list of questions regarding this matter to the Tisza Party and Gábor Pósfai, the nominee for Minister of the Interior: we asked whether they were aware of the IT specialist’s past and, in light of the above, whether they consider “Buddha” suitable for any sensitive position within the Ministry of the Interior. If so, what specific position were they referring to? We received no response from anyone.

We asked the National Bureau of Investigation whether our information was correct that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had already filed a complaint against “Henry” in February—before the publication of Captain Bence Szabó’s interview—due to messages found on the seized IT devices? We did not receive a response from them either.

We asked the Central Investigative Prosecutor’s Office whether their investigation into the secret service’s involvement—launched following a complaint filed by Transparency International Hungary and István Tényi—had yielded any results. We received the following response:

“An investigation into the crime of abuse of office has been underway at the Budapest Regional Investigative Prosecutor’s Office since April 9, 2026; however, in the interest of the criminal proceedings, no further details can be disclosed at this time.”

We would have liked to get M.T., alias “Buddha,” to respond personally to the issues raised in the article, but although we tried to contact him, we were unable to reach him. Since he has not yet chosen to go public, we used only his initials in the article.

Yet it would be in the new government’s vital interest for the public to have a clear understanding of this rather murky affair, because if the investigation gets bogged down in infighting within the ruling party, the promise of the regime change will lose all credibility. As for the political position overseeing the secret services, in the spirit of renewal, an expert of impeccable character—or at least one more impeccable than Örs Farkas, who reigned during the Rogán era—should be selected. Not to mention the promises made regarding responses to press inquiries.

Written and translated by Tamás Bodoky, the Hungarian version of this story is here.