The Reincarnation of a Bulletproof Hoster
Summary: A Trend Micro report from April 2016 described an unnamed Netherlands-based VPS hosting provider as a cyber-attack facilitator, and Krebs on Security identified the company as HostSailor.com, which Trend's data tied to at least 80 Pawn Storm attacks since May 2015 plus activity from the DustySky group. Krebs traced the domain through WHOIS records and a 2012 Webhostingtalk sale thread to registrant Ali Al-Attiyah and an email address also used to register santrex.net, a bulletproof hoster that went out of business in early 2013 after its servers were hacked and its payment accounts reportedly seized.
Bottom line: Trend Micro redacted the hoster's name after publication, and the trail Krebs followed links HostSailor to Santrex, a hoster whose network Google's Safebrowsing database flagged as roughly 90 percent malicious - a reminder that takedowns of bulletproof infrastructure often relocate rather than end the operation.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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