US drops sanctions on second Russian bulletproof hosting vehicle this year

The US Treasury has sanctioned Aeza Group, a Russian bulletproof hosting (BPH) provider, and four of its cronies for enabling ransomware and other cybercriminal activity.

This is the second time this year BPH providers have been hit with sanctions. These organizations claim to offer cybercriminals resources, such as servers and other computer infrastructure, that can't be disrupted or seized by law enforcement. Aeza Group was one of them — they provided services to big-name ransomware gang BianLian, as well as info-stealing ops like Meduza and Lumma, (Lumma, by the way, just got taken down by the FBI and friends.)

BianLian is a tricky customer that has been around for years, regularly changing tactics and complicating defenders' attribution efforts. 

Once a key player on the ransomware scene, BianLian as of January 2024 joined the growing number of cybercrime groups abandoning encryption to embrace a data exfiltration-based extortion model.

It is known ...