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A far-right website that was among the platforms used to stage the deadly violence on the US Capitol was again forced to find new internet service protection after a shell company owned by two Russians registered in Scotland severed ties with the platform’s internet host.
The 8kun website, previously known as 8chan, has long been a favorite platform for the far right and for devotees of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory. It was used by rioters before the Jan. 6 attack to mobilize other “patriots” to “help storm the Capitol,” some on the bulletin board debating politicians to be killed once inside.
In the aftermath of the riot, users continued to post violence-promoting content, including maps of government buildings to target and combat techniques of a proposed civil war.
It was not the first time that the platform had been linked to acts of violence. Its predecessor site, 8chan, was linked to a series of White Nationalist terrorist attacks, including the massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas.
8kun has encountered significant hurdles in staying online since at least 2019, when the El Paso attack happened. All websites are maintained online by a service network comprising web hosts and domain name registrars. 8kun had a loyal internet provider in Washington state VanwaTech, whose CEO has repeatedly defended his connections to the hate site in the name of free speech.
But the site cannot function without platform protection services that prevent DDoS attacks or distributed denial of service attacks, and few vendors have been willing to work with it.
Following its withdrawal from infrastructure company Cloudflare, 8kun, viaVanwaTech, worked with Oregon-based CNServers LLC for DDoS protection. This company also severed ties with 8kun when it was alerted to the site’s violent history.
As of October 2020, 8kun had received DDoS protection from DDoS-Guard, a company that provides protection to a number of controversial websites, including the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer. 8kun’s links to DDoS-Guard were first reported by security researcher and journalist Brian Krebs.
This week, DDoS-Guard became the latest company to sever ties with 8kun’s hosting company, VanwaTech, following requests from the Guardian.
8kun is now hosted by the American company FiberHub, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to an analysis by independent web researcher Ron Guilmette seen by the Guardian.
FiberHub does not provide infrastructure directly to 8chan but supports VanwaTech as a customer, FiberHub co-founder and CTO Rob Tyree confirmed to The Guardian via email.
“We have not received any reports that any content hosted by VanwaTech supported by our infrastructure is in violation of our terms of service or our acceptable use policy, which includes the obligation to comply with all laws and US federal and state regulations, ”Tyree said. “If we received such reports, we would follow our internal policies and comply with all legal requirements to resolve these issues as quickly as possible.”
DDoS-Guard, the company that provided services to VanwaTech until earlier this week, has been registered under a limited partnership, a financial structure in Scotland that allows non-residents to set up businesses with little control, the November 24, 2017 by Aleksei Likhachev and Evgeniy Marchenko – two Russian businessmen who continue to own the company. The partnership under which DDoS-Guard is registered is called Cognitive Cloud and is listed at an address in Edinburgh’s Forth Street.
Speaking from the city of Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, earlier this week, Marchenko told The Guardian that 8kun was not a direct customer of DDoS-Guard, but that his company provided services to VanwaTech.
He described DDoS-Guard as a global information security service. It has hosted “thousands of websites,” he said, adding that it was simply providing VanwaTech with “transit protection services” to prevent it from falling victim to DDoS or other attacks. “Brute force”.
“Looks like they’re hosting some questionable sites like Qanon / 8chan / 8kun. I still do not understand what it is and I have no information on their content or their activity, ”he added.
“We are not linked to any political problem and do not want to be associated with
makes sense with the client hosting toxic sites like QAnon / 8chan, ”Machenko said after the company severed ties with VanwaTech.
When asked why he was using a Scotland-based company, Marchenko replied, “Why not? The UK is very comfortable for business. I visited London once, 14 years ago. He said: “We do not support any illegal activity. We don’t know anything about what happened in Washington, nor do we support one side or the other. This company [VanwaTech] is just one of our many customers. “
Other DDoS-Guard clients include the Russian Defense Ministry, as well as media organizations in Moscow. The company’s webpage links to an official story from the ministry, which describes recent measures taken by the Kremlin to ban the use of smartphones by Russian soldiers, after a series of leaks.
“There is nothing wrong with making money from the Russian government or any other government. It’s only business, ”Marchenko said.
DDoS-Guard’s office in Edinburgh is located at 18 Forth Street, a terrace of small Georgian townhouses in the eastern part of New Town Edinburgh. There was no evidence of an office owned by Cognitive Cloud at this address or any of the other five nearby townhouses. An employee of a nearby company said that in his seven years working there, he had never met anyone from Cognitive Cloud, but had frequently responded to requests to receive mail and packages for the company. An official at the Edinburgh site said Cognitive Cloud was not a tenant at the address, but referred the Guardian to another company with a different name based in London, to which she said the mail addressed to Cognitive Cloud was supposed to be passed on.
The Scottish number listed on the DDoS-Guard site is disconnected. A tech support representative contacted via the Russian phone number on the site said the majority of its customers were based in Russia and declined to answer any further questions.
Marchenko said his office in Edinburgh was an “EU subdivision” with a “representative”.
VanwaTech did not respond to a request for comment.
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