In 2018 Digital Security (DSEC), a Russian tech company, was hit with sanctions by the US DOT.
Through online research we believe we have identified a network created by its leadership Ilya
Medvedovsky, Dmitriy Evdokimov and Yevgeniya Klimina to apparently evade these sanctions.
Sanctions were imposded on DSEC because of work conducted on a project that would increase Russia's
offensive cyber capabilities for the Russian intelligence services, including the FSB. ERPScan and Embedi, subsidiaries of DSEC were also sanctioned.
In the face of these sanctions, DSEC has appeared to have developed a complex network of front companies around the world to continue to operate unimpeded, an obfuscation technique that many other sanctioned entities carry out.
Ilya Davidovich Medvedovsky is a cybersecurity professional, associated with these three companies. He was CEO of ERPScan and Embedi and was General Director of DSEC.
Medvedovsky, also the author of a series of hacker books written in Russian "Attack via the internet", claims the sanctions are retaliation for exposing hundreds of vulnerabilities in the products of companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and CISCO.
Dmitriy Evdokimov attended the Blackhat USA 2017 as a speaker, listed as CTO of Embedi, he was interested in reverse engineering, software verification and research and development of exploits.
In 2018 he was head researcher of DSEC. Described as an expert in computer security in the field of reverse engineering and malware attack analysis.
Evdokimov founded Limited Liability Company Klaudran in August 2021, listed as a
computer software development company with Evdokimov as General Director.
Medvedovsky co-founded ERPScan with Aleksandr Polyakov in 2010. Together they built a tool called the ERPScan Security Monitoring Suite. Capable of identifying 10,000 different vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in a variety of systems.
In an interview from 2013 Polyakov states that he was invited to work for DSEC by a university buddy, a place where the best hackers were working. He then formed a research center within the company, before creating a subdivision of the company called ERPScan.
Yevgeniya Aleksandrovna Klimina, an employee of DSEC, is listed as the former head of Digital Compliance. She is also listed as the head of Limited Liability Company Kiber Servis (Cyber Service).
Cyber Service and Digital Compliance were also founded by Elena and Olga Medvedovskaya. Elena and Olga are assumed to be relatives of Ilya.
Because of the sanctions-imposed Ilya cannot be named as owner for these companies to operate on the international market. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Elena and Olga are aware of the smokescreen being created.
Klimina is listed as the sole executive of Czech Republic company Machine Learning Lab s.r.o. Clicking on the link for MLL takes you directly to the website for Safe O'Clock, a cyber security platform covering all aspects of SAP systems.
These types of efforts undermine the "know your customer" model that international business relies on and can put unknowing clients and users at risk to intrusion and cyber-attacks.
With the sharp increase in sanctions against Russia in recent years, the INFOSEC community needs to continually seek to fully understand who they are doing business with to ensure the security of their clients from threats with connections to Russian
Intelligence Services.
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Positive Technologies (Pozitiv Teknolodzhiz) was about to become a public company when it was hit with sanctions by the US Department of Treasury. The proposed sale would have resulted in owner Yury Maksimov becoming a billionaire.
The sanctions, imposed in April 2021, were against six Russian Technology companies accused of supporting the efforts of the Russian Intelligence Services to carry out malicious cyber activities against the US, most notably the SolarWinds attack (attributed to #APT29 #CozyBear).
These sanctions hit PT particularly hard as, of the Tech companies affected, PT was the only one with international partnerships and customers, including Microsoft, IBM and Samsung.
It would appear that, despite some of the headlines in the press following the hack by
Cyber Resistance, Sergey Morgachev wasn't as important as we had first thought. informnapalm.org/en/hacked-russ…
From what we have heard he was head of his Department with some extra responsibilities supporting the Head of his section within the 85th GTsSS. Not the Deputy Head of the entire unit, as Cyber Resistance had stated.
What can't be disputed is the salary that Morgachev has been paid since moving from the #GRU to STC. A
check across a few employment sites suggests that with the experience he undoubtedly possesses he could be earning much more that he is receiving at the moment.
Morenets is a senior official in the #85thGTsSS that is supposed to be a sophisticated state cyber hacking enterprise that should be operating with a high level of plausible deniability.
It seems they are incapable of keeping their standards high enough to avoid detection/attribution based on the numerous instances of cyber activity which have recently been attributed to the #GRU.
This would seem to be another role which Morenets is seemingly incapable of fulfilling successfully. In the last year alone the following cyber-attacks have been attributed to the GRU.
Despite the mistakes made it may surprise you that Morenets still has a job in the #85thGTsSS, also known as #APT28 or Fancy Bear. It is our understanding that he is in charge of a Directorate involved in Cyber espionage.
We have heard that his staff are not happy with his management. We know that in the lead up to the war with Ukraine staff had their working hours extended by Morenets while he remained on regular hours.
We would like to introduce you to Aleksey Sergeyevich Morenets, a #GRU officer indicted by the US along with 6 others in October 2018.
He may look familiar to you? Here he is in our tweet of congratulations to Yevgeny Serebryakov, on GRU day, for his part in the failed attempted hack of the OPCW HQ in The Hague.
Morenets and Serebryakov were part of the team intercepted by the Dutch authorities in April 2018. At the time Morenets was described in the press as a bungling hacker after it was discovered that he had travelled under his real name and date of birth.
We thought it was time to return to highlighting some of the tech companies with ties to the Russian intelligence services. Today we introduce you to Special Technological Centre Ltd. #STC#СТЦ
In late 2016 STC was sanctioned by the U.S. in the amendment to Executive Order 13964 issued by President Obama.
STC was named as one of three companies that provided material support to the #GRU interference of the Presidential election in 2016 and assisting them in conducting signals intelligence operations.