On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department, along with officials from Australia and the United Kingdom, imposed sanctions on Russian internet hosting company Zservers, which knowingly provided infrastructure for cyberattacks, including IP addresses for coordinating and launching ransomware attacks.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department, along with officials from Australia and the United Kingdom, imposed sanctions on Russian internet hosting company Zservers, which knowingly provided infrastructure for cyberattacks, including IP addresses for coordinating and launching ransomware attacks.
«Ransomware actors and other cybercriminals rely on third-party network service providers like Zservers to carry out their attacks on American and international critical infrastructure,» The Record writes, citing Bradley Smith, acting undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.
According to the report, Zservers provides hosting services used by cybercriminals. The Russian service’s client was the hacker group LockBit, one of the most active ransomware operators on the Internet. LockBit’s victims included tire manufacturer Continental, aerospace corporation Boeing, and restaurant chain Subway.
In February 2024, it became known that law enforcement agencies in 10 countries, including Ukraine, had shut down one of the largest international hacking groups, LockBit, which had caused billions of euros in losses. As part of a large-scale special operation, members of the group from Ukraine, a father and son from Ternopil, were also exposed.
Last summer, a 28-year-old hacker, a native of the Kharkiv region, who lived in Kyiv and collaborated with the Russian hacker groups LockBit and Conti for a reward, was detained in Ukraine. He faces 15 years in prison.
Sanctions were applied against Zservers, XHOST Internet Solutions LP, as well as Russian employees, including key administrators of the Internet hosting company, in particular, Alexander Bolshakov, Alexander Mishin, Ilya Sidorov, Dmitry Bolshakov, Igor Odintsov, and Vladimir Ananyev, RBC-Ukraine writes .
US sanctions include asset freezes and transaction bans. Banks and other financial institutions also risk secondary sanctions if they continue to do business with sanctioned individuals and entities.
The US Treasury Department, according to information from Reuters, added that the penalties arose from last year’s joint cyber sanctions by the US, the UK and Australia against the ransomware group Evil Corp.
