The Ukrainian provider MyHost.ua stored websites of the Hamas terrorist group, which attacked Israel on October 7, on its servers.
The provider was unaware of this until it was contacted by law enforcement.
In particular, it turned out that the servers of the Ukrainian provider hosted the website of the Hamas combat wing alqassam.ps and another resource, hamas.ps, which were registered at different times by two customers from Palestine.
As this news has caused a resonance among Ukrainians, Dev.ua publishes comments from the largest players in the data storage market in Ukraine, where they explain how hosting works and why the owner of MyHost.ua could not see that he had such strange customers.
"Hosting is a business with low margins and a small average check, which is offset by sales. In order for a company to make money, as many processes as possible should be automated: resource selection, public offer, card payment, etc. The Ukrainian hosting companies that are still operating have all their processes automated and do not monitor the actions of each client. And, by and large, they are unable to do so, because there are thousands of customers," says UCLOUD CEO Denys Burduk.
"Hosting sells space and its main task is to ensure the smooth operation of the service," he explains.
MyHost.ua is owned by entrepreneur Oleksandr Sedinkin. In the commentary of Dev.ua
The entrepreneur said that last week the provider received a request for alqassam.ps from law enforcement agencies.
"We were very surprised ourselves, because in recent years, no complaints have been received on the server of the specified subscriber," said Oleksandr.
The subscriber was a Palestinian citizen who had previously ordered a separate service from MyHost.ua back in 2020.
"We, as a service provider, have no information about what exactly the subscriber stores on the server. This is his service, for which he is responsible and liable, according to the Public Offer Agreement," emphasizes Oleksandr.
He added that the hosting provider's terms of service "prohibit the placement of resources that contravene the laws of Ukraine or materials that infringe the copyrights of third parties (pornography, pirated content, materials promoting violence, murder, racial hatred, ethnic hatred, etc.
Therefore, after the appeal of law enforcement officers, Sedinkin stopped serving the Palestinian, and the sites "moved" to Russia.
"According to my information, the subscriber moved the website to another hosting. We were still monitoring this website for some time last week, and it has changed more than one IP address, and therefore more than one service provider," he emphasizes.
As for the Russian VDSINA VDS Hosting, to which alqassam.ps allegedly could have moved, Mezuzah reported that it also hosts the website of the Hamas organization itself – hamas.ps.