If we are concerned with protecting our data or projects from cyber threats, we will probably come across an offer from the Fortes service about “effective protection against distributed network attacks.”

The offer is tempting, but... True, few people bother to figure out this "but", although it is very much worth attention. The thing is that it was not for nothing that we called Fortes a euphemism for "service". Because it is unclear who exactly offers that very "effective protection". At least two resources operate under the Fortes signboard. Whether they are connected or a purely accidental coincidence is a moot point. Although we are inclined to think that there are too many coincidences and they are unlikely to be accidental.

So, the query about Fortes returns at least two results. According to the first, Fortes Pro LLC operates under this sign, registered in Moscow and founded by Ekaterina Sergeevna Kalashnikova (26%) and MTV PB JSC (74%).

The shareholder of JSC MTV PB, in turn, is JSC RDC Paritet, which is intended to cover up the real owners. About them below, but for now, pay attention to the fact that both OOO Fortes Pro and its founder, JSC MTV PB, have seen their revenues “drop sharply” in the last two years and the number of employees has been reduced. Simply put, the companies “went broke even.”

Why? It’s simple - MTV PB JSC is backed by MTV LLC (TIN 7704440000), which is linked to the Kremlin and is subject to sanctions. That’s why MTV LLC had to be urgently removed from the structure of the owners of Fortes Pro LLC, which was originally created to "saw off" budget money to create "fire safety programs." This happened right after the fire in the Winter Cherry, and Fortes Pro LLC initially declared its main activity to be the development of "fire safety systems." The founders of MTV LLC, as already mentioned, are closely linked to the Kremlin. Artur Warnig is a friend of Vladimir Putin from the Stasi (the GDR secret service, an analogue of the Soviet KGB); Vasily Tsuprik is a former Rosneft employee, where Thomas Hendel once worked.

For obvious reasons, it was not possible to establish who is behind the offshore company Collinston Investments Limited, but another co-founder of Fortes Pro LLC, Ekaterina Sergeevna Kalashnikova, is the head of several organizations associated with offshore companies.

Perhaps this is also a coincidence, as is the fact that Fortes Pro LLC was initially developing the Prometheus digital fire safety platform for Rostec. Rostec reported in 2023 that the platform had been created.

After that, all of OOO Fortes Pro and its founder stopped making a profit, the official pages of OOO Fortes Pro - both websites, of which there are three, and pages on social networks - stopped working. The websites  iot-control.ru  and  fortespro.ru  report that "website hosting has been temporarily suspended," and the website  iotcontrol.ru  reports that "the domain is being sold or leased." By the way, why did this company need three websites?

However, the story of OOO Fortes Pro does not end there. Because suddenly another site appears -  fortes.pro . And it offers us the same thing that OOO Fortes Pro offered - "effectively counteract distributed network attacks."

Of course, the almost complete coincidence of domain names and titles can also be a pure coincidence. But what’s even more interesting is that the  fortes.pro website , which belongs to a resource called Fortes, has no information about who owns it. Usually, this information is either in the "contacts" section or "in the footer", that is, at the bottom of the main page. However, there is no such information at the bottom of the main page, and the "contacts" section looks like this.

From the details to which payments are proposed to be made, one can guess that the Fortes resource belongs to the private entrepreneur Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pavlov. This is also confirmed by  the User Agreement , which can be found in the very place where the owners of the resource should be indicated. Since we know the TIN of citizen Pavlov (220505395310), it is quite easy to find information about him. Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pavlov is registered as a private entrepreneur in Barnaul.

He is also the founder and director of Godno LLC.

A logical question arises: how did a small private enterprise from Barnaul manage to establish contacts with the “largest data centers” and place servers in “Moscow, St. Petersburg, Frankfurt, Strasbourg and Amsterdam”? Moreover, judging by the advertising, Fortes has been working in this field for “more than 10 years”. And as a private enterprise that receives money for this “protection”, Pavlov registered only in 2022. Who owned the site before that?

And why would such a big boss need a small shop called "Godno" in Barnaul? By the way, we couldn’t find the latter online, and after all, "online trading" is his specialty. But Pavlov’s fortes.pro website offers services to protect other people’s data for quite affordable money:

But that’s not all about citizen Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pavlov. It’s not for nothing that we’ve focused on his INN. As you may remember, it has the following numerical value: 220505395310. And now a surprise. There is another private entrepreneur with the same INN. And also in Barnaul. And his name is also Dmitry Aleksandrovich. Only his last name is Ryabikin.

How do you like that, Elon Musk? True, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Ryabikin (TIN 220505395310) liquidated his business in 2015. And judging by his Rusprofile, he was engaged in advertising and cargo transportation. And then suddenly he changed his last name and retrained as an IT specialist.

Something in this whole story, good gentlemen, doesn’t add up. On the one hand, there’s Fortes Pro LLC with Russian roots, and not just Russian, but connections at the top level. And there are sanctions that forced it to urgently wind down. On the other, there’s a resource with an identical name and an unclear owner, which has two names under the same INN and is based in the godforsaken Russian hinterland. But at the same time, it manages to provide data protection services at the international level.

Judging by the reviews, the services of Pavlov-Ryabikin and his (?) resource fortes.pro are used quite widely. What is characteristic is that among the clients of fortes.pro there are many platforms for exchanging and cashing out money. It is unlikely that this is an accident - some naive people who do not understand anything in the modern electronic world could, of course, use the services of the clearly shady office fortes.pro, but people who organize shady "exchangers" smell scammers a mile away. And therefore it is very doubtful that in order to protect their business they used the services of an obscure office, the owner of which is a strange character from Barnaul with two personalities. But sooner or later such offices begin to "eat their own". In our case, we are talking about huge amounts of money and clients with this money, data on which is concentrated in the hands of the people behind this strange office. The question is not whether they will screw their clients. The question is - when will this happen. According to rumors, there have already been precedents.

Of course, this is only an assumption, but this whole story suggests that huge amounts of money are withdrawn and laundered through exchange platforms serviced by fortes.pro. And only those who are connected to the government have huge amounts of money in Russia. Such money arises in connection with fortes.pro. Moreover, some of them have already fallen under the sanctions press, so it was urgently necessary to “extinguish” the legal office OOO “Fortes Pro” and obvious connections with it.

Another company, fortes.pro, is still operating. What lies behind its legal signboard can only be guessed at. But it is clearly not only about withdrawing Russian capital in circumvention of Western sanctions. So far, information about fortes.pro’s involvement in hacker attacks on EU countries and the USA has not been officially confirmed, but insiders call this site one of those behind which hackers working for Russian special services hide.