"Cloud company assisted 17 different government hacking groups, U.S. researchers say" 2 August 2023

An obscure cloud service company has been providing state-sponsored hackers with internet services to spy on and extort their victims, a cybersecurity firm said in a report to be published on Tuesday.

Researchers at Texas-based Halcyon said a company called Cloudzy had been leasing server space and reselling it to no fewer than 17 different state-sponsored hacking groups from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Vietnam.

Cloudzy CEO Hannan Nozari disputed Halcyon’s assessment, saying that his firm couldn’t be held responsible for its clients, of which he estimated only 2% were malicious.

In an exchange over LinkedIn, Nozari told Reuters: “If you are a knife factory, are you responsible if someone misuses the knife? Trust me I hate those criminals and we do everything we can to get rid of them.”

Digital defenders say the case is an example of how hackers and ransomware gangs use small firms operating at the fringes of cyberspace to enable big hacks...