UK smashes Russian cybercrime networks accountable for assaults on UK companies

• New sanctions goal the Media Land cybercrime syndicate accountable for facilitating cyber-attacks on UK-based firms. 

• Foreign Secretary pronounces newest crack down on illicit cyber exercise globally, as cyber-attacks price the UK financial system £14.7 billion in 2024. 

• Today’s coordinated motion with Australia and the United States demonstrates the UK’s ongoing dedication to tackling malicious Russian cyber exercise.  

Illicit Russian networks enabling cyber-attacks around the world are at the moment uncovered and sanctioned by the UK, in newest crack down on malicious Russian cybercrime. 

Today’s motion targets Media Land, some of the vital operators of so-called “bulletproof” internet hosting companies, which offers on-line infrastructure that allows cyber criminals to have interaction in criminal activity, together with ransomware and phishing assaults. 

These shadowy on-line networks enable cyber criminals and malicious actors to suppose they will act with impunity and destroy livelihoods – at the moment’s motion, taken alongside our allies in Australia and the United States and in collaboration with the UK’s National Crime Agency, proves in any other case. 

Cyber criminals hiding behind Media Land’s companies are accountable for ransomware assaults in opposition to the UK’s important nationwide infrastructure together with these within the telecommunications sector, in addition to malware and phishing campaigns concentrating on UK taxpayers. 

Defending Europe from malicious Russian cyber and hybrid exercise is a shared precedence for the UK and Germany, with Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper set to fulfill her German counterpart Johann Wadephul. 

Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, stated:

Cyber criminals suppose that they will act within the shadows, concentrating on exhausting working British folks and ruining livelihoods with impunity.

But they’re mistaken – along with our allies, we’re exposing their darkish networks and going after these accountable.

Today’s measures may also straight goal Media Land’s ringleader Alexander Volosovik, AKA Yalishanda, who has been energetic within the cyber underground since at the least 2010, and is understood to have labored with a number of the most infamous cyber prison teams, together with Evil Corp, LockBit and Black Basta. 

Ransomware assaults like these facilitated by Media Land considerably undermine the nationwide safety of the UK and our allies and straight hurt British companies. Cyber-attacks are estimated to have price British companies £14.7bn in 2024, accounting for 0.5% of GDP and rising yearly. 

The hurt attributable to ‘bulletproof’ internet hosting companies like Media Land extends past enabling cyber-attacks in opposition to companies, with their companies offering cowl for these finishing up a variety of malicious exercise. Aeza Group LLC, additionally sanctioned at the moment, has offered ‘bulletproof’ companies to help the work of the Social Design Agency – a Russian disinformation company sanctioned by the UK in 2024 for its makes an attempt to destabilise Ukraine and undermine democracies around the globe. This motion demonstrates our continued dedication to crack down on organisations that allow the Kremlin’s info battle. 

Alongside our allies, the UK is rooting out these prison cyber gangs and going after their ringleaders – selling development by safeguarding British companies, elementary to this authorities’s Plan for Change.  

Putin has turned Russia right into a secure haven for these malicious cyber criminals, cultivating a darkish prison ecosystem with deep ties to the Kremlin. Through at the moment’s motion and repeatedly concentrating on malicious actors like LockBit and Evil Corp, the UK is disrupting these underground networks. If Russia isn’t going to scrub up its act and go after these criminals, then the UK and our allies will. 

Background

• Please see press releases on the UK’s sanctions in opposition to the Social Design Agency, ZSERVERS, LockBit and Evil Corp for extra element. 

• Today, the National Cyber Security Centre and its worldwide counterparts have issued new recommendation to assist defend in opposition to potential malicious cyber actions enabled by bulletproof internet hosting suppliers, learn extra here. 

• A full checklist of these added to the UK sanctions checklist at the moment is as follows: 

• MEDIA LAND LLC  

• ML.CLOUD LLC  

• Alexander Alexandrovich VOLOSOVIK  

• Yulia Vladimirovna PANKOVA  

• Kirill Andreevich ZATOLOKIN  

• Andrei Valerevich KOZLOV  

• AEZA GROUP LLC