VC.ru Blocks Lawyer's Account After Article Exposing In-Platform Phishing Scheme
A lawyer writing under the name David Zamirovich on VC.ru since 2022 had his account blocked shortly after publishing material about a phishing campaign operating through articles on the platform itself.
The original trigger was a report on Habr describing how a victim lost 10k USDT after interacting with malicious links. Zamirovich summarized the attack pattern without naming individuals or posting unredacted screenshots.
The phishing mechanism relied on publishing normal-looking articles that passed moderation and gained search visibility. Attackers later replaced internal links with redirects through intermediaries that led to cloned services. Users connecting wallets and signing verification transactions lost funds.
Zamirovich's article focused on defensive advice and referenced the existing Habr analysis. One hour after publication the account received an automated notice citing violation of rule 5 concerning creation of additional accounts to bypass restrictions.
The author had never operated secondary accounts. He sent formal requests under Article 14 of 152-FZ for disclosure of personal data processing and a consumer-protection claim demanding account restoration and precise reasons for the block.
Support initially claimed an automated system had detected IP overlap with previously banned accounts. The account was restored the same day. Shortly afterward the platform changed the account type to commercial, requiring a monthly payment of 56,000 rubles for search indexing.
After additional legal correspondence the platform reversed the commercial classification on 26 August and restored normal user status. Zamirovich continues to document the case on his Telegram channel Lawyer without bugs.
Related articles
Aroshka Cloud Faces Scrutiny Over Alleged False Claims of SOC 24/7 Operations and High-End Infrastructure
StackWorks has published the fourth installment in its investigative series on Aroshka Cloud, detailing how the cloud storage provider accused the studio of orchestrating a DDoS attack shortly after the third part appeared. The service published five posts claiming technical evidence linked StackWorks to the attack, including IP traces from Moscow, Ufa, and Stavropol, while asserting that its SOC 24/7 team mitigated a 3.5 Gbit/s assault within seconds. StackWorks responded with a pre-trial claim demanding removal of the posts and a public retraction, which Aroshka Cloud rejected within seven minutes. Analysis of the provider’s own Kwork job postings reveals requests for template-based support staff, a five-VDS server pool, and later up to eight NVIDIA H200 GPUs with InfiniBand, contradicting public statements about multi-country data centers and round-the-clock security engineers. Further inconsistencies include mismatched time zones in email headers, inflated user statistics, and reliance on the BeDrive script rather than custom development. The investigation continues with plans to involve law enforcement regarding suspicious visitor logs.
Reports Surface on Alleged De-Anonymization of Admins Running Major Russian Hacker Forums
An independent researcher has compiled publicly available information pointing to the possible identities of administrators behind prominent Russian-language darknet forums including exploit.in and duty-free.to. The analysis traces exploit.in back to its 2006 launch by a user known as Toha, later linked to Ukrainian authorities or associates, with the forum reportedly transferred or sold. Forum moderator Quake3, identified in open sources as Anatoly Kravchuk, ceased activity in October 2026 and appears on a German police wanted list. Additional details from forum posts and anonymous Telegram channels name Mikhail Rytikov, known as Abdulla, as a key figure tied to server hosting and operations. The report also notes the recent involvement of known Russian hacker wazawaka on duty-free.to and highlights the declining viability of several legacy forums due to law enforcement actions. All claims are presented as unverified public speculation without new original sourcing.
Google Strengthens Chrome Defenses Against ClickFix Clipboard-Based Scams
Google has updated Chrome to detect and warn users about malicious commands copied to the clipboard as part of ClickFix attacks. These scams trick users into pasting harmful scripts into system tools such as PowerShell under the guise of fixing errors or providing tech support. The new protections activate when Enhanced Protection in Safe Browsing is enabled and send suspicious commands for analysis after removing personal data. Google has also shifted scam page detection from a local Gemini model to a server-side implementation to improve accuracy against fake tech support, antivirus, and browser update sites. The changes make it harder for attackers to bypass browser download checks by abusing clipboard and system console execution. Official details were published in the Google Security Blog.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC: Practical Guide to Detecting Email Spoofing and Phishing
The article explains how email authentication mechanisms SPF, DKIM, and DMARC work together to combat spoofed messages that impersonate trusted services. It provides concrete DNS record examples and shows how to interpret Authentication-Results headers in received emails. SPF verifies authorized sending IP addresses but does not check the visible From address. DKIM adds cryptographic signatures to message content and headers, while DMARC ties these checks to the sender domain visible to users and defines handling policies. The guide also covers common configuration errors, forwarding issues, and why successful authentication does not guarantee message safety. It concludes that these protocols must be combined with additional security measures such as attachment scanning and user awareness training.