Operation Saffron dismantles First VPN, 33+ servers seized, user database captured, Switzerland named JIT participant; Phobos RaaS infrastructure link confirmed

The May 2026 Operation Saffron takedown of First VPN Service (1VPNS) (the Russian-language, no-log criminal anonymisation service in which Switzerland sat on the Eurojust joint investigation team) has now drawn coordinated sanctions. On 2026-07-13 the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, in an action coordinated with the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, designated 1VPNS and its administrator Dmytro Rashevskyi (who used false identities including "Maksim Sorin" and "Roman Chabanenko" to buy infrastructure from providers that would otherwise have refused him), and separately a Belarusian national, Yegeniy Silayev, who sells "cryptors" (US Treasury, 2026-07-13). Treasury frames cryptors as tools "built specifically to make malware stealthier and more effective by disguising it as harmless files" (US Treasury, 2026-07-13), designating the obfuscation-service vendor as a distinct enabling layer beneath the ransomware payload and the affiliate, not just the anonymisation infrastructure. The designations were made under Executive Order 13694 as amended; the FBI confirms the underlying takedown was led by France's BL2C and the Dutch NHTC "with assistance from Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Luxembourg," and that at least 25 ransomware groups, including Avaddon, used the service for reconnaissance and intrusions (FBI Boston, 2026-06-09).

Treasury describes the concrete abuse pattern: ransomware groups purchased 1VPNS infrastructure and used it "to hide the origins of their attacks, deploy malware, and manage exfiltrated data", an external commercial VPN used as an anonymising relay in front of the operators' own reconnaissance, delivery and exfiltration traffic (US Treasury, 2026-07-13).