In an investigation into a rogue hosting company, thousands of servers have been seized by the East Netherlands cybercrime team. According to police, the hosting company is used solely to carry out criminal activities. Research shows that the company has featured in more than 80 investigations into cybercrimes at home and abroad since 2022 and continues to be used in criminal activities even recently.
The hosting company presents itself as bulletproof, advertising complete anonymity for users and suggesting that they do not cooperate with investigative agencies.
There are countless hosting companies, legal and sometimes rogue. Hosting companies ensure that websites, applications and other online services are available on the Internet. They rent out digital space, as it were.
This investigation concerns a rogue provider, who rented space to criminals so that further criminal activities could be carried out from this space. These include, for example, conducting ransomeware attacks, botnets, phishing activities or, for example, for distributing child pornography.
In the November 12 action, the infrastructure was seized. In total, this involved some 250 physical servers that were located in data centers in The Hague and Zoetermeer. The seizure of these physical servers also took thousands of virtual servers off the air. The seizure of the infrastructure allows further investigation into the criminal activities on the various servers and prevents the hosting company from being used for criminal purposes.
'Our first focus is to stop the criminal activities that were enabled through this company. This will prevent new victimization in the short and long term and disrupt the criminal process," police said. Given the large amount of data seized, analysis is currently the highest priority.
