A joint operation conducted by European and U.S. law enforcement agencies dismantled the bulletproof hosting service provider Lolek Hosted and led to the arrest of five administrators by Polish authorities.
Lolek Hosted is a bulletproof hosting service provider used to facilitate the distribution of information-stealing malware, and also to launch DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks, manage fictitious online shops, manage botnet servers and distribute spam messages worldwide.
The suspects advertised the service using slogans such as “You can host anything here!” and “no-log policy,” and they were accepting payments in cryptocurrencies.
Polish authorities, who made the arrests, said three other detainees have been subjected to preventive measures in the form of police supervision, bail, and a ban on leaving the country. Alongside the arrests, hundreds of servers containing terabytes of data, computer equipment, and mobile phones have been confiscated.
The Lolek Hosted service was used to target hundreds of thousands of private entities and public institutions. According to the Polish police, the losses they incurred amount to millions of dollars.
According to the press release published by DoJ, the founder of the service, Artur Karol Grabowski (36) provided “bulletproof” webhosting allegedly facilitating the criminal activities of LolekHosted clients by allowing clients to register accounts using false information, not maintaining Internet Protocol (IP) address logs of client servers, frequently changing the IP addresses of client servers, ignoring abuse complaints made by third parties against clients, and notifying clients of legal inquiries received from law enforcement.
The domain “LolekHosted.net” which was registered in 2014, allowed clients to host “everything except child porn.”
The service was used also by NetWalker ransomware operators and it has been estimated that LolekHosted clients used the services to execute approximately 50 NetWalker ransomware attacks.
If convicted on all counts, Grabowski faces a maximum penalty of 45 years in prison. He is also the subject of a $21.5 million seizure order.
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