Admins of Bulletproof Hosting Service Used by Russian Hackers Arrested in Netherlands
Netherlands arrests two bulletproof hosting admins who served Russian-aligned threat actors and evaded EU sanctions.
Summary
Dutch authorities arrested a 57-year-old from Amsterdam and a 39-year-old from The Hague on May 18 for operating companies that provided hosting infrastructure to Russian threat actors. The suspects allegedly ran front companies for the sanctioned Stark Industries hosting provider, enabling Russian state-sponsored actors like NoName057(16) to conduct DDoS attacks and disinformation campaigns against EU targets. Investigators seized over 800 servers and equipment from data centers in Dronten and Schiphol-Rijk.
Full text
Authorities in the Netherlands have arrested the owners of two Dutch companies that allegedly provided bulletproof hosting services to Russian threat actors and evaded sanctions imposed by the European Union. According to an announcement by the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD), the suspects, a 57-year-old from Amsterdam and a 39-year-old from The Hague, were arrested on May 18. The investigators conducted searches at three locations in Enschede and Almere, and at two data centers in Dronten and Schiphol-Rijk, and seized laptops, phones, and over 800 servers. FIOD says the 57-year-old man is the owner and director of a Dutch company that acted as a front for a sanctioned web hosting provider. The sanctioned entity had been created two weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and facilitated disinformation, interference, and disruptive cyberattacks against members of the EU. After the company was sanctioned in May 2025, most of its technical infrastructure was transferred to the arrested suspect’s Dutch company.Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading. The 39-year-old man, FIOD says, is the director and owner of a firm that ensured the servers of the front company would remain functional and online. FIOD’s scant announcement does not name the two or their companies, but an eight-month investigation by de Volkskrant revealed that two suspects, Youssef Z. and Andrey N., provided services to Stark Industries, a web hosting provider founded by Moldovan nationals Iurie and Ivan Neculiti. “They have been acting as enablers of various Russian state-sponsored and affiliated actors to conduct destabilizing activities including information manipulation, interference, and cyber-attacks against the Union and third countries,” the EU said last year, when Stark Industries was placed on the sanctioned entities list. Per de Volkskrant’s investigation, Andrey N. owns Mirhosting, which had physical servers deployed at various data centers. Those servers were rented to Stark Industries, which helped Russian hackers such as NoName057(16) launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and other types of attacks against EU targets. The EU’s May 2025 sanctions prohibited European citizens and entities from aiding Stark, and the two Moldovan brothers restructured their company and moved part of the activities to Youssef Z.’s firm. Called WorkTitans and based in Enschede, the company rents server space and resells it, essentially obscuring the real customer and making abuse detection difficult. 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Indicators of Compromise
- malware — NoName057(16)