US and Allies Sanction Russian Bulletproof Hosting Service Providers

The US, Australia, and the UK announced sanctions against two Russian bulletproof hosting providers, Media Land and Hypercore Ltd., and their sister entities and leadership, according to SecurityWeek. The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) layers in sanctions on Media Land and its subsidiaries Media Land Technology (MLT) and Data Center Kirishi (DC Kirishi), plus individuals Aleksandr Volosovik, Kirill Zatolokin, and Yulia Pankova, who has assisted Volosovik with legal issues and finances.

OFAC says Volosovik advertised BPH services under the alias Yalishanda and provided infrastructure and troubleshooting for ransomware and DDoS attackers, while Zatolokin is described as collecting payments and coordinating with threat actors and helping manage Media Land’s operations.

In conjunction with Media Land, threat actors have used infrastructure from its sister company ML Cloud for similar cybercriminal activities, and Hypercore Ltd. is described as a front for Aeza Group, another BPH provider sanctioned earlier this year. The Five Eyes partners and the Netherlands issued a joint advisory on mitigating risks from BPH providers, recommending dynamic filtering of ASNs and IPs, shared threat intelligence, and initiatives to improve internet routing security.