Hosting Providers | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a surge in "mass scanning, credential brute-forcing, and exploitation attempts" originating from IP addresses associated with a Russian bulletproof hosting service provider named Proton66 . The activity, detected since January 8, 2025, targeted organizations worldwide, according to a two-part analysis published by Trustwave SpiderLabs last week.  "Net blocks 45.135.232.0/24 and 45.140.17.0/24 were particularly active in terms of mass scanning and brute-force attempts," security researchers Pawel Knapczyk and Dawid Nesterowicz said . "Several of the offending IP addresses were not previously seen to be involved in malicious activity or were inactive for over two years." The Russian autonomous system Proton66 is assessed to be linked to another autonomous system named PROSPERO. Last year, French security firm Intrinsec detailed their connections to bulletproof services marketed on Russian cybercrime forums under ...

A novice cybercrime actor has been observed leveraging the services of a Russian bulletproof hosting ( BPH ) provider called Proton66 to facilitate their operations. The findings come from DomainTools, which detected the activity after it discovered a phony website named cybersecureprotect[.]com hosted on Proton66 that masqueraded as an antivirus service. The threat intelligence firm said it identified an operational security (OPSEC) failure in the domain that left its malicious infrastructure exposed, thereby revealing the malicious payloads staged on the server.  "This revelation led us down a rabbit hole into the operations of an emerging threat actor known as Coquettte – an amateur cybercriminal leveraging Proton66's bulletproof hosting to distribute malware and engage in other illicit activities," it said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Proton66, also linked to another BPH service known as PROSPERO, has been attributed to several campaigns distribut...