Just as well we never started war with Russia/USSR if a handful of cops can take out a NATO grade bunker.
600 armed German cops storm Cyberbunker hosting biz on illegal darknet market claims
Cops have seized the physical premises and servers of the Dutch-German ISP that once hosted The Pirate Bay – after storming the hosting biz's ex-NATO bunker hideout with 600 gunmen. Cyberbunker, aka CB3ROB, was shut down by German police in what appears to be a military-grade operation targeting the hosting firm's Traben- …
COMMENTS
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Monday 30th September 2019 15:38 GMT thegroucho
This implies the ISP outfit actually had the proper security procedures in place to be able to at least contain the police for a bit. And the onsite security were actually worth something.
I used to regularly go to an unnamed datacentre near London. For non-ex-army environment the place was really tough to get into.
You need to get through a full-sized steel turnstile controlled by the security booth, then enter the security boot through steel door, mini-turnstile, another steel door. This only gets you into the courtyard, not the actual building. There are still something like 3-4 locked doors until you can reach equipment. And oh, another full-sized turnstile for every data area, transparent walls but still.
Vehicles were only allowed in if they were pre-registered, twin gates, metre high retractable bollards between the gates, likely able to flip over a lorry.
The security are ex-Gurkha. Look small and puny, but I suspect they can carry me for 1/2 mile, and I'm well over 6'. I would certainly will not spill their pint, or if I do will ask with my sweetest voice if they wanted replacement.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 16:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
"they couldn't even be bothered to name it."
A customer had a data centre in an industrial estate that was intended to be low profile. However it had a Fort Knox appearance - and it had no name plates. Which made it stick out like a sore thumb amongst all the other vanilla buildings which all displayed large company name plates and logos.
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Monday 30th September 2019 18:16 GMT ma1010
This isn't the first time
Back in the 1950's there was a group of rich American businessmen who decided they didn't want to pay any taxes. Their dodge was to buy an island in the Caribbean and declare sovereignty - "Hey, we're our own country - the U.S. government can't tax us!"
A little later, a small gunboat from some island republic landed and "conquered" the fledgling nation. The inhabitants screamed bloody murder and said "We're U.S. citizens! You can't do this!" The State Department demurred, pointing out that they had declared themselves sovereign, so the defense of their own "nation" was their problem.
I suspect someone in the U.S. government arranged the "attack." After that incident, AFAIK, no one else decided to try that particular tax-avoidance trick.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 16:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: This isn't the first time
"This sounds invented."
Similar to the sea fort off the coast of England claimed as "The Principality of Sealand".
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 19:56 GMT doublelayer
Re: This isn't the first time
I don't know about the original example, but it is possible they were referring to the "Republic of Minerva". This attempt at creating an independent island occurred in the Pacific rather than the Caribbean. It's unclear whether Tonga already asserted that these islands (underwater islands, but islands nonetheless) were part of their country, but either way they took them by force and they are still recognized as Tongan territory.
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Monday 30th September 2019 15:11 GMT Dazed and Confused
600 cops
That must have been quite a full bunker
It reminds me of a raid on a pub next door to a place I used to work. The pub was rumoured to be a place where it was possible to buy things not commonly for sale in high street shops. Usually when cops wondered into such establishments it wasn't uncommon for items for sale to somehow get dropped by patrons while visiting the sanitary facilities. So one day coach loads of men in blue uniforms turned up and just piled into the pub till it was impossible for anyone to move and hence to dispose of any inconvenient package which had somehow fallen into their pockets.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 10:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 600 cops
something stinks here with this number, it's hell of a lot of people. I mean, it's not like they were there to cover all 45 hidden escape routes from the bunker? Or storming one single entrance, 600 cops strong ,or even half of them. I imagine even 60 (armed) cops in a confined space would have been a crowd...
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 06:33 GMT big_D
Yes. But they rarely use their weapons and most reach retirement without having drawn their weapon on duty, let alone fired it outside the shooting range.
I think the statistic was for the shooting in San Bernardino, the police there fired more shots in that one incident that the whole German police force in a year. The last figure I can find is 85 shots for the whole year, 49 of which were warning shots, 15 criminals injured and 6 killed.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 10:52 GMT Gwaptiva
In Germany, some police are more armed than other police.... I'm still shaking at the memory of the morning an Arrest Team (SEK) stormed my neighbour's flat. I'm just a regular nerdy joe, and I was in the flat next door, but I nearly peed my pants at the shock and awe. And that was just a regular SEK... GSG9 are another level altogether
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Monday 30th September 2019 16:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
600 armed German cops, but I don't see any mention of weapons seized.
Just as well, since your average policeman shouldn't be entrusted with a firearm. They have a bad habit of shooting innocent bystanders and each other.
I had a friend that was an ex-Navy Seal that provided firearms training for the local police department.
His opinion was that none of them should be allowed to carry a gun.
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Monday 30th September 2019 16:18 GMT thegroucho
In UK the regular police units don't carry weapons.
Ergo the reason to have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialist_Firearms_Command
I think your friend should do better to advocate for firearms control (assuming he was training the police in USA) and training as opposed to grandstanding.
P.S. For the record, the downvote wasn't mine
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 14:03 GMT DontFeedTheTrolls
"In UK the regular police units don't carry
weaponsfirearms". Batons, Tasers and CS spray are all weapons, albeit generally regarded as non-lethal.There was a case in the UK a few years ago where Highland officers were routinely armed. It didn't go down well when it hit the media.
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Wednesday 2nd October 2019 15:45 GMT Muscleguy
The cops in the Highlands were 'routinely armed' by having a weapon securely locked in their vehicle. This was because it was often a VERY long way for the local armed response unit to come all the way from Inverness or even Aberdeen.
In NZ the cops aren't routinely armed though they too usually have recourse to a firearm (rifle or shotgun) locked in a footwell of their vehicle. Again in many places time to backup reaching you can be very long and most of the cockies (farmers) will have access to licensed firearms for pest control* or putting down injured stock.
*1. Wabbits
2. Brush tailed possums (escaped Aussies)
3. Feral cats (wandering cats can be shot on sight as can dogs on agricultural land)
4. Feral goats. Taar are usually confined to conservation land these days.
5. Wallabies in one South Island area More escaped Aussies.
Many people also hunt for food. Feral pigs (descendants of 18thC British pigs), red deer and ducks (in season but NOT the protected ones you have to know the difference). My BiL does this with my nephew but includes goats and wallabies on occasion. A good butcher will happily turn the less useful parts of a deer or pig carcass into sausage for you. The venison snags I tried there last year were fab, and gluten free too.
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Monday 30th September 2019 16:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Frankly, in Europe many police forces are armed - even with automatic weapons - and the event of innocent bystanders shot is very, very rare.
Maybe because:
1) They are far, far less afraid people are armed with semi-automatic assault weapons
2) They don't open fire as quickly as US police
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 08:59 GMT rg287
Well they don't open fire as quickly as US police because the general population doesn't have guns.
Au contraire. Most of Europe has plenty of guns. Not as many as the US, but plenty nonetheless.
The Czech Republic even has concealed carry permits - 2/3 of legal gun owners have one.
The Czech homicide rate is half that of the UK (no, not the USA, the UK) despite the fact that people can and do walk the streets with guns on their hips.
Firearm violence has remarkably little to do with firearm ownership (otherwise Europe would have homicide rates 3-5x higher than the UK - which they don't). Violent crime correlates to societal failings, and in the US the relatively ready access to firearms translates to firearm violence, but if you took away the guns they'd just have high levels of knife crime instead. The firearms are - at most - a symptom.
It's mostly to do with culture, proper training of Police and the fact we have far fewer desperate people in Europe rendered bankrupt by medical bills/lack of social welfare.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 09:06 GMT Pascal Monett
Re: they'd just have high levels of knife crime
I don't think so. Using a gun is impersonal, using a knife is very much up close and personal. Plus you might get blood on yourself.
But I do agree that the societal guardrails we have thanks to welfare and social care are certainly what keeps the pot from boiling over.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 12:53 GMT OrientalHero
Re: they'd just have high levels of knife crime
It's not just the societal guard rails, it's also having none of the monetary pitfalls/spears pushing ppl over the edge. I just read an article in the Economist about Electronic Tagging and I'm a bit flabbergasted about the way it works in the US.
So this lady has spent 3 weeks in jail because she got into an argument whilst on probation and the other party called the cops. 3 weeks cos she can't afford the 500USD bail.
A charity pays the bail at that point, and she has to wear electronic tagging.
She's charged 13USD per day and 50USD initial.
After several weeks and no-shows by the claimant, the charges are dismissed and the lady is released as innocent as she was when she went in, but now in debt for X hundreds of USD...
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/09/26/an-alternative-to-cash-bail-comes-with-its-own-costs
The tagging costs the authorities far less than keeping someone locked up, so I'm not sure why they don't foot the bill.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 10:19 GMT Sir Runcible Spoon
I seem to recall a study that compared US and Canada, both of whom have similar levels of gun ownership apparently.
Iirc, the study concluded that most of the difference was down to how the media portrayed violence (the news especially). I.e. the more it's glorified, the more gun crime there is.
Weird huh?
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Monday 7th October 2019 22:41 GMT Tomato42
Nice, in Poland it's "just" 6.5 months (1200 hours in classroom/shooting range/training) and then 2 months as an "intern" for the lowest grade. But that's after you are actually selected to be a police officer which requires passing a test of knowledge, psychiatric evaluation, background check, etc.
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Monday 30th September 2019 16:12 GMT Dazed and Confused
Re: Servers in space ?
Radiation shielding them is likely to be an issue. I've no idea what they do to achieve it these days but I used to be involved in building rad hardened chips and back then you had to make them on top of an insulator such as sapphire.
Do they just accept that you can't stop it and just go in for massive redundancy and ECC these days?
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 07:20 GMT eldakka
Re: Servers in space ?
Considering the number of communications and spy satellites in orbit, which are basically orbiting computers with accessories, I think this is a solved problem (for at least LEO/GEO and assuming a mega-flare isn't involved).
If you want to put serious processing power in space, I think powering it all would be an issue, not radiation shielding.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 09:05 GMT rg287
Re: Servers in space ?
Do they just accept that you can't stop it and just go in for massive redundancy and ECC these days?
That's been the SpaceX approach - forget paying $$$ for a rad-hardened chip, just fly 5 regular chips and vote between them. Of course most of their hardware to date (rocketry) doesn't actually spend much time in space, only Dragon has an endurance stretching into days and I'm not sure what they do with that.
Given their proposed StarLink satellites will be in LEO and have expected lifespans of a couple of years, the value proposition of rad-hardened chips is lower compared with a major science instrument or expensive GEO satellite which needs to last 10+years. If you've scaled to launching >5,000 satellites losing a few prematurely to radiation is just a cost of doing business.
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Monday 30th September 2019 16:31 GMT Stoneshop
Re: Servers in space ?
I find myself idly wondering about the practicalities of shoving a server in a satellite
As satellite launches get billed to the customer according to launch weight[0], that's pi[1] in the sky
[0] couple 100k EUR/UKP/USD per kg to reach a geostationary orbit
[1] needs to be rad-hardened, plus there's still the solar panels and/or RTGs and the comms dish[2]
[2] uplink won't be cheap either.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 00:42 GMT doublelayer
Re: Servers in space ?
Lots of logistical issues there. Your issues:
1. Construction of a satellite to withstand the conditions of orbit.
2. Having sufficient power supply, almost certainly from solar, to run the equipment.
3. Provision of sufficient processing, memory, and storage given the constraints of power supply and physical space.
4. Actually getting a launch.
5. The insurance if your rocket blows up.
6. The insurance if your satellite fails once in orbit.
7. Methods for controlling the satellite's orbital path so it won't hit or be hit by another one and people to monitor and use those methods.
8. A plan for what you'll do when the satellite decays out of orbit. Depending on how you've put this up, this might take a while before you care.
9. The method of communication with the satellite, as you won't be granted a monopoly over any frequency and disruption from other comms systems is likely a risk.
10. The method of connecting users to the satellite. Either they'll have to have similar hardware that you use, or you'll still have to downlink to the ground and use the facilities of ISPs, in which case have you really gained anything.
11. The potential that your project won't be seen kindly by your nation of residence, either because they don't like what you've put on the server, they don't like that your satellite is messing up other people's comms, or similar.
12. The potential that your business won't be seen kindly by your nation of residence, which can block your actions just fine while you are operating things from the ground.
13. The potential that either of the above won't be seen kindly by a nation in which you are not a resident but which does have an extradition treaty with your nation of residence. Since your satellite probably provides service throughout most of the world, they can argue that they have standing to prosecute you.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 08:28 GMT Stoneshop
Re: Servers in space ?
The method of connecting users to the satellite. Either they'll have to have similar hardware that you use,
That would be just what would be required for standard satellite Internet, with probably a sprinkling of encryption. Some of those systems don't even require a terrestrial link to a gateway, unlike the early sat systems that were meant to just boost your download speeds for larger stuff (where RTT mattered less). Apart from that you need at least three satellites to cover most of the Earth, though you might get away with two if you concentrate on where the bulk of your customers are.
But your terrestrial control for the systems 'up there' would still be as vulnerable to being taken out as any other ISP, unless you happen to run it out of that undersea volcanic lair.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 14:11 GMT DontFeedTheTrolls
Re: Servers in space ?
There's an El Reg article about HP's Supercomputer's return from it ISS. Radiation is a significant problem.
COTS hardware is not up to the job of operating economically in space given there were 200 servers seized in this raid.
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Monday 30th September 2019 17:06 GMT Pascal Monett
"200 servers along with documents, cellphones and large quantities of cash"
Yep, but no guns.
600 armed officers seems a tad much for invading an ISP's premises, even if said ISP is located in a bunker. I mean come on, there's 450 of those guys who must have spent four hours just standing around.
Yes, it was a WWII bunker. That does not mean that it was defended like a WWII bunker. If it had been, I'm pretty sure that 600 cops might not have been enough, and the death toll would have been, as they say, catastrophic.
A much better option would have been to send a squad of 20 men, and keep a hundred as backup. If shots got actually fired, then bring in the army.
They made a pseudo-military operation out of a perfectly civilian one.
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Monday 30th September 2019 19:16 GMT Stoneshop
Re: "200 servers along with documents, cellphones and large quantities of cash"
Yes, it was a WWII bunker.
Nope. Built in 1955.
Not all Japanese got notified of the end of WW2, especially those on small, remote Pacific islands with some keeping at it well into the 1970s and 1980s, but in Germany no-one considered the war not to have been over for ten years then.
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Monday 30th September 2019 23:03 GMT FlamingDeath
Re: "200 servers along with documents, cellphones and large quantities of cash"
They made a pseudo-military operation out of a perfectly civilian one
Yeah but I bet it was a great experience, EVERRRRYOOOOONE!!! wanted to go
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 09:09 GMT rg287
Re: "200 servers along with documents, cellphones and large quantities of cash"
600 armed officers seems a tad much for invading an ISP's premises, even if said ISP is located in a bunker. I mean come on, there's 450 of those guys who must have spent four hours just standing around.
It's Germany. The Police are routinely armed. "600 armed officers" is a tautology and just means "600 officers". One would assume there was a "breaching" group who did the initial entry and secured the premises, followed by a large contingent of specialist/forensic officers who were armed by dint of being German Police Officers, but weren't specifically members of the MP5-toting black-vest club.
There's "armed" and "armed".
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Monday 30th September 2019 17:29 GMT vtcodger
How to get there
For the curious, the command bunker complex is marked on Google Maps. It's at 49.699118, 7.083355. There's what I take to be a trailhead ("Wanderparkplatz traumschleife Boerfink") on the road a few hundred meters SW of the buildings with a path that will probably take you and 599 of your closest friends into the heart of the surface complex without having to bother the folks at the gate.
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Monday 30th September 2019 18:02 GMT mark l 2
600 armed police to arrest 15 people, does it really need 40 cops for every person arrested or where they expecting a lot more people or resistance.
I suspect a lot of this was a phising operation as they knew that the data centre was probably hosting illegal content and so they raid to see who they can catch.
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Monday 30th September 2019 21:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Probably they wanted to insure that they had enough people to prevent destruction of evidence. They might not think there are 100 people inside, but if they don't know if there are 10 or 25 they need a big force to insure they catch all the people quickly before they can push the "destroy all incriminating evidence" button.
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Monday 30th September 2019 21:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Resistance is futile
Partly it may be the police just being prepared for possible insane attempts at resistance.
Also, I think that the main reason will be that the police are thinking that as soon as they enter, they then need to have the numbers to rapidly get everywhere in the complex and detain / disable everyone as near to simultaneous as possible. If one or two suspects are free for even a few minutes, then there is a big risk (*if* the suspects are competent) that they will be able to start some kind of process to destroy or encrypt the evidence in the data centre.
The 600 might also include police IT forensics boffins.
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Monday 30th September 2019 19:29 GMT Stoneshop
5000m^2
That would be several tens, and possibly up to a hundred, rooms and corridors, which you want to enter nearly simultaneously to avoid the crew, any of who might be in any of those rooms, being alerted and starting a data wipe. Not that that can't be reconstructed if not done using thermite or explosives (and I doubt the crew had those measures in place), but you want to be sure to capture most if not all of it with as little disruption as possible, hence the flooding. Quite similar to the pub scenario described above.
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Tuesday 1st October 2019 01:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Is it just me, or does 200 servers sound like a small number?
When I was in the colocation business, we had lots of customers with over 200 servers just in individual cages (albeit, in cages large than 200 or 300 square feet). Having a 5 story bunker with 200 servers sounds very low-density by comparison. I wonder if they never upgraded power and cooling when the bunker was converted to a bit barn. I suppose that given the nature of the facility it would be pretty hard to upgrade.