@Alyx said:
I'm kinda curious what they actually did in order to become a target of Russian law enforcement
From what I know, there have been visits to their office by FSB in the past (not long ago), and it was caused by them ignoring Emails from FSB. They operated in Russia without compliance with Kremlin.
Russian newspaper Mash claims it was over their affiliation with Russian drug marketplace BlackSprut. https://t.me/mash/62931 (archive)
Yuri Bozoyan, general director of St. Petersburg's Aeza Group, and the 21-year-old founder of the company were arrested for running the famous BlackSprut drug store. For more than two years they provided the technical base for the store's operation.
According to Mash, the men became friends six years ago, when 16-year-old Arseny offered 27-year-old Yuri to invest in the topic of renting servers - they agreed on 400k rubles. This is how Aeza Group LLC came into being.
In 2023, the men went to BlackSprut: they began to ensure the work of the store selling drugs. Plus protect against DDoS attacks. All expenses for office rent, machinery and equipment were taken care of. The money was received through cryptocurrency wallets and divided amongst themselves.
The drug businessmen were caught in February 2025. After a pawnbroker sold 4.19 grams of mephedrone to undercover Moscow police officers. Two days ago, the offices of the Aeza Group were searched. Yuri and Arseny were prosecuted under Articles 210 (organized crime group) and 228.1 (drug trafficking) - they face up to 20 years. Together with them were arrested executors Penzev A. A., Gast V. V., Lavrukhin G. A. and two businessmen: T.V. Zubov and M.A. Orlov
From other interesting news, Aeza has been banned today from Lolz for apparently scamming $23.5k. Its surprising as it was their primary market and they have been a large donors to the forum.
Our team has always adhered to the principles of full openness and transparency. In light of the situation with the two managers of the company, we would like to inform you as follows:
Our team and the office of the Russian company continue to work as before, with no change in staff or work schedule, no impact on the work and quality of services provided, and no impact on the infrastructure of both companies.
In the near future, Aeza Group LLC will finalize the appointment of a new CEO, which will be the only significant change that will not affect the work or services of our Russian company in any way.
🖥 What will happen to Aeza?
The team and companies of the Aeza brand will continue to operate as before, maintaining their pace of development, and will not be affected in any way by this situation.
Since the arrests occurred, ~70 /24's are gone from Aeza global asn. It doesn't look good.
Primarily from Russian and CIS rir's, seems like they want nothing to do with Aeza.
1 subnet from Aeza Group(Russian ASN), and 1 subnet from Cloud Solutions(MskHost reloaded) are also gone.
They only posted that it affects few subnets in Germany, it is not the case anymore as even subnets from other regions are gone. https://aezastatus.com/incidents/23 (archive)
Issue Description:
Hello, my VPS is experiencing IPv4 connectivity issues with the following symptoms:
Successfully pinging gateway 10.0.0.1 and DNS 8.8.8.8
All other IPv4 addresses are unreachable (except for 138.124.34.220)
IPv6 connectivity remains fully functional
Troubleshooting Attempted:
Local routing table appears normal
No active ICMP drops detected in firewall rules
Request:
Kindly investigate:
Potential upstream routing restrictions for 138.124.34.220
Hypervisor-level virtual network configuration
Possible MTU/ARP issues
Note: VPS IPv4 address is 138.124.34.220
@treesmokah said:
Since the arrests occurred, ~70 /24's are gone from Aeza global asn. It doesn't look good.
Primarily from Russian and CIS rir's, seems like they want nothing to do with Aeza.
1 subnet from Aeza Group(Russian ASN), and 1 subnet from Cloud Solutions(MskHost reloaded) are also gone.
They only posted that it affects few subnets in Germany, it is not the case anymore as even subnets from other regions are gone. https://aezastatus.com/incidents/23 (archive)
The web cannot submit a work order. Can you help me change the IP address?
Can confirm there is some fuckery going on in Stockholm now too, one of my VPS just lost IPv4.
IPv6 still works somehow, but control panel cannot communicate with the hypervisor by the looks of it.
Was a fun ride while it lasted I guess. IHostFart outlives another host.
@treesmokah said:
Can confirm there is some fuckery going on in Stockholm now too, one of my VPS just lost IPv4.
IPv6 still works somehow, but control panel cannot communicate with the hypervisor by the looks of it.
Was a fun ride while it lasted I guess. IHostFart outlives another host.
What subnet are you on?
For me NL, AT and SE are all still up. In fact, the one in AT is in the same subnet as aeza.net, so if it goes down... xD
Aeza CEO Arseniy Penzev has apparently been poisoned.
As it became known to MK, we are talking about 22-year–old Arseny Penzev, the founder of the St. Petersburg IT company Aeza Group. At the end of last week, a group of company employees led by the director was arrested at the request of the Investigative Department of the Interior Ministry. According to investigators, IT specialists organized the sale of highly addictive drugs via the Internet.
According to our information, yesterday the condition of 22-year-old Penzev deteriorated, and he was taken with signs of poisoning with a potent substance from SIZO No. 7 to one of the Moscow hospitals.
Aeza Group is a hosting provider from Saint Petersburg. The company provides hosting and server rental services for businesses and individuals.
It is rumored he poisoned himself to get to hospital, and that it wasn't Kremlin. It will probably be the version authorities will go with, even if it was them they wouldn't admit it obviously, but it seems unlikely to be them behind it.
Our international company Aeza International LTD and the Russian company Aeza Group continue their work as usual. The situation with the management of the Russian company has not affected our team, our work schedule, the work of the office and our infrastructure, equipment, has not affected the work of the clients of both companies.
What happened?
On April 1, Russian law enforcement officers detained the former head of the Russian company Aeza Group LLC, Arseniy Penzev, and the company's CEO, Yuri Bozoyan.
According to the information received, the detention of both individuals is not related to Aeza Group LLC, and the equipment, infrastructure, or accounts of the Russian company, which continue to operate unchanged, have not been affected.
Since April 2, both companies Aeza International LTD and Aeza Group LLC have continued their full–fledged work, the management of the Russian company is carried out by the company's investor and co-owner Igor Knyazev. Until the new CEO takes office, founder Igor Knyazev fully controls the work of the Russian company's team. The company retains all obligations to customers, partners and employees, to the foreign company Aeza International LTD.
We are also systematically collecting information about the causes of the current situation and will provide further updates as we receive information about the results of the investigation and after receiving a court decision regarding these former employees.
Impact on a foreign company
The foreign company Aeza International LTD continues to operate without changes, has not been affected by the situation in any way.
The approach to further work of Aesa
The team of both companies will maintain a unified approach to providing the best services based on flagship equipment with an extremely wide communication channel and powerful DDoS protection, maintain the same level of quality, actively develop a transparent system to prevent abuse of the company's services, and reorganize work processes for further growth. Comprehensive work will increase the comfort of our customers and ensure reliable operation of services in any situation.
We responsibly declare that we have completely eliminated any risks for our clients and their services, and the companies and customer services are not affected in any way by the incident.
Technical support work
Due to the increased number of requests, the average response time of the support team has been temporarily increased and is steadily decreasing back to normal. No later than the end of this week, the situation will be normalized by expanding the support staff and introducing new tools to simplify the decision of incoming applications by employees.
One of the main topics of the appeal is the issue of preserving the Russian company, which was affected solely by the fact of a change in its leadership and will definitely retain its work with an identical team, infrastructure and list of locations.
The second most important topic of the appeal was a complaint from customers of about 7% of virtual servers about network connection problems. The reason for this problem was a short-term error in setting up about 7% of the subnets of both companies.
By now, most of the affected subnets have been fixed, and the remaining 3% will be fixed or replaced in the coming hours, no later than 48 hours from the publication date. If necessary, you can independently order an IPv4 address for the server, later receiving compensation from support for its cost and double the amount from the time when the network is unavailable for this service.
The situation is completely under the control of our team and is being rapidly resolved directly with the suppliers of the subnets of both companies.
A smaller but still significant volume of requests was for questions about the temporary absence of methods of replenishment in Russian rubles.
This restriction is temporary and does not affect the services of our clients who paid for services exclusively in Russian rubles. When auto-renewal is enabled, the services of such clients are automatically extended and, if there is a lack of balance, they are charged against the negative balance.
Upon assuming the post of the new CEO of the Russian company Aeza Group LLC, we will definitely inform you about this and payment methods in Russian rubles will become available again in the personal accounts of both companies.
If you need an urgent response from the support team, we recommend that you contact t.me/aezasupport_bot by sending the contract number, the support code and the text “I expect a response”, which will increase the priority of responding to your request.
We expect the support team to return to the previous response rate no later than 4 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday– April 10th.
Legal consequences
As we mentioned earlier, the detentions of individuals are in no way related to the work of the Russian company Aeza Group LLC, are not related to the fact of ownership or work in this company, its team, all bank accounts, all equipment and all infrastructure continue to operate without any changes.
The only seized equipment were personal devices of the detained citizens, which were not used by the team and are not required for the work of the Russian company.
Further future
The Aeza brand is incredibly dear to our team and at any cost will continue its long-term work for many years and its development at the same speed! We greatly appreciate the trust of all our customers and partners, appreciate your support of our team in this situation and are confident that it will soon be fully resolved for our company.
We will definitely continue to please you with good news and will always keep you updated on the news in our Russian telegram channel – t.me/aezahost_ru .
Comments
Everything today is politics.
Sad evolution indeed.
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
I'm kinda curious what they actually did in order to become a target of Russian law enforcement
From what I know, there have been visits to their office by FSB in the past (not long ago), and it was caused by them ignoring Emails from FSB. They operated in Russia without compliance with Kremlin.
Second founder, Arseniy Penzyev has also been arrested.
And Gast Vladimir, a known cybercriminal connected to both of Aeza founders.
Gast, Arseniy and Alexander Chertkov (head of marketing) on the same photo.
bonus
Aeza "team" page is now returning 404, you can view it at archive.today.
This seems soo odd to me tho.
Following their podcast it looked like where fully aware of the fact that Russia has it's own set of rules.
Russian newspaper Mash claims it was over their affiliation with Russian drug marketplace BlackSprut.
https://t.me/mash/62931 (archive)
Ohh.. well.. that would explain it.
Guess we won't seem them for a while.
From other interesting news, Aeza has been banned today from Lolz for apparently scamming $23.5k. Its surprising as it was their primary market and they have been a large donors to the forum.
Complaint thread: https://lolz.live/threads/8534351/ (archive)
Some photos of the detained in court
And a statement from Aeza https://t.me/aezahost_ru/817
hmmm
I was idling a SWE VPS. Should I renew it?
I have seen no downtime myself, but a dozen of their subs just got pulled. Not sure what is it caused by.
I would say renew it, but maybe not for a year period, until things stabilize. I've been paying them quarterly.
This might be a great moment to backup, if one still has access to their service.
Please stop the planet! I wish to get off!
Thinking I need to go for larger providers. Kinda had it with suppliers bailing/going sketchy after a year or three
Weak aura, not a true lowender
Check our KVM VPS (flags are clickable): 🇵🇱 VPS 🇸🇪 VPS 🇵🇱🇸🇪 VDS | Looking glass: 🇵🇱 🇸🇪
Should be some awesome server auctions at Hetzner in Helsinki soon!
Any deals?
I bench YABS 24/7/365 unless it's a leap year.
2 Cores, 2GB RAM for one pack of cigarettes :P
Finally a decent request.
@Alyx
May we GE-LOCATE the region of that pack of cigarettes? US ( ~12 USD ), Canada ( ~18 USD ), EU ( ~8 USD )
Just to have a general idea.
that ~20K; give or take, is a magic number so it seems.
Host-C - VPS & Storage VPS Services – Reliable, Scalable and Fast - AS211462
"If there is no struggle there is no progress"
Since the arrests occurred, ~70 /24's are gone from Aeza global asn. It doesn't look good.
Primarily from Russian and CIS rir's, seems like they want nothing to do with Aeza.
1 subnet from Aeza Group(Russian ASN), and 1 subnet from Cloud Solutions(MskHost reloaded) are also gone.
They only posted that it affects few subnets in Germany, it is not the case anymore as even subnets from other regions are gone.
https://aezastatus.com/incidents/23 (archive)
what about India
Canada? You gots Canada now?
Free Hosting at YetiNode | MicroNode | Cryptid Security | URL Shortener | LaunchVPS | ExtraVM | Host-C | In the Node, or Out of the Loop?
Not yet, that is the next on the bucket list to travel.
Host-C - VPS & Storage VPS Services – Reliable, Scalable and Fast - AS211462
"If there is no struggle there is no progress"
Subject: VPS IPv4 Network Outage (Gateway Accessible but External IPs Unreachable)
Issue Description:
Hello, my VPS is experiencing IPv4 connectivity issues with the following symptoms:
Successfully pinging gateway 10.0.0.1 and DNS 8.8.8.8
All other IPv4 addresses are unreachable (except for 138.124.34.220)
IPv6 connectivity remains fully functional
Troubleshooting Attempted:
Local routing table appears normal
No active ICMP drops detected in firewall rules
Request:
Kindly investigate:
Potential upstream routing restrictions for 138.124.34.220
Hypervisor-level virtual network configuration
Possible MTU/ARP issues
Note: VPS IPv4 address is 138.124.34.220
The web cannot submit a work order. Can you help me change the IP address?
Work order denied, chicken has been fried.
Can confirm there is some fuckery going on in Stockholm now too, one of my VPS just lost IPv4.
IPv6 still works somehow, but control panel cannot communicate with the hypervisor by the looks of it.
Was a fun ride while it lasted I guess. IHostFart outlives another host.
What subnet are you on?
For me NL, AT and SE are all still up. In fact, the one in AT is in the same subnet as aeza.net, so if it goes down... xD
138.124.25.0/24, and its gone from dfz.
27 more /24's have disappeared
Parceling assets. Customers should move ASAP if any prod data hosted.
Aeza CEO Arseniy Penzev has apparently been poisoned.
https://www.mk.ru/incident/2025/04/08/odin-iz-arestovannykh-po-delu-aytishnikovnarkotorgovcev-popal-v-bolnicu-s-otravleniem.html (archive)
It is rumored he poisoned himself to get to hospital, and that it wasn't Kremlin. It will probably be the version authorities will go with, even if it was them they wouldn't admit it obviously, but it seems unlikely to be them behind it.
In other news;
Aeza says they will appoint a new CEO "no later than April 22" https://t.me/aezahost_ru/820
and a more lengthy statement on recent events https://t.me/aezahost_ru/821
https://telegra.ph/Aéza-prodolzhaet-rabotu-04-09-2 (archive)
Aesa continues to work
April 09, 2025
Dear friends, dear customers and partners,
Our international company Aeza International LTD and the Russian company Aeza Group continue their work as usual. The situation with the management of the Russian company has not affected our team, our work schedule, the work of the office and our infrastructure, equipment, has not affected the work of the clients of both companies.
What happened?
On April 1, Russian law enforcement officers detained the former head of the Russian company Aeza Group LLC, Arseniy Penzev, and the company's CEO, Yuri Bozoyan.
According to the information received, the detention of both individuals is not related to Aeza Group LLC, and the equipment, infrastructure, or accounts of the Russian company, which continue to operate unchanged, have not been affected.
Since April 2, both companies Aeza International LTD and Aeza Group LLC have continued their full–fledged work, the management of the Russian company is carried out by the company's investor and co-owner Igor Knyazev. Until the new CEO takes office, founder Igor Knyazev fully controls the work of the Russian company's team. The company retains all obligations to customers, partners and employees, to the foreign company Aeza International LTD.
We are also systematically collecting information about the causes of the current situation and will provide further updates as we receive information about the results of the investigation and after receiving a court decision regarding these former employees.
Impact on a foreign company
The foreign company Aeza International LTD continues to operate without changes, has not been affected by the situation in any way.
The approach to further work of Aesa
The team of both companies will maintain a unified approach to providing the best services based on flagship equipment with an extremely wide communication channel and powerful DDoS protection, maintain the same level of quality, actively develop a transparent system to prevent abuse of the company's services, and reorganize work processes for further growth. Comprehensive work will increase the comfort of our customers and ensure reliable operation of services in any situation.
We responsibly declare that we have completely eliminated any risks for our clients and their services, and the companies and customer services are not affected in any way by the incident.
Technical support work
Due to the increased number of requests, the average response time of the support team has been temporarily increased and is steadily decreasing back to normal. No later than the end of this week, the situation will be normalized by expanding the support staff and introducing new tools to simplify the decision of incoming applications by employees.
This restriction is temporary and does not affect the services of our clients who paid for services exclusively in Russian rubles. When auto-renewal is enabled, the services of such clients are automatically extended and, if there is a lack of balance, they are charged against the negative balance.
Upon assuming the post of the new CEO of the Russian company Aeza Group LLC, we will definitely inform you about this and payment methods in Russian rubles will become available again in the personal accounts of both companies.
If you need an urgent response from the support team, we recommend that you contact t.me/aezasupport_bot by sending the contract number, the support code and the text “I expect a response”, which will increase the priority of responding to your request.
We expect the support team to return to the previous response rate no later than 4 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday– April 10th.
Legal consequences
As we mentioned earlier, the detentions of individuals are in no way related to the work of the Russian company Aeza Group LLC, are not related to the fact of ownership or work in this company, its team, all bank accounts, all equipment and all infrastructure continue to operate without any changes.
The only seized equipment were personal devices of the detained citizens, which were not used by the team and are not required for the work of the Russian company.
Further future
The Aeza brand is incredibly dear to our team and at any cost will continue its long-term work for many years and its development at the same speed! We greatly appreciate the trust of all our customers and partners, appreciate your support of our team in this situation and are confident that it will soon be fully resolved for our company.
We will definitely continue to please you with good news and will always keep you updated on the news in our Russian telegram channel – t.me/aezahost_ru .