The FBI seized three entire server racks, each containing multiple servers hosting dozens of websites causing websites, including popular blogs, bookmarking sites to go offline.
The New York Times reports that an FBI raid on a data center in West Virginia at 1:15 a.m resulted in the seizure of 3 entire server racks each containing multiples server hosting dozens of websites. The servers were owned by DigitalOne a company based in Switzerland.
The FBI gave no reason for the raid but this is a warning to data centers everywhere: If the Feds knock on your door without a warrant demanding customer data and you better hand your data over. If you refuse, they will come back with a warrant and seize your entire servers.
F.B.I. seizes web servers, knocks sites offline
Verne G. Kopytoff
The New York Times[…]In an e-mail to one of its clients on Tuesday afternoon, a DigitalOne employee, Sergej Ostroumow, said: “This problem is caused by the F.B.I., not our company. In the night F.B.I. has taken 3 enclosures with equipment plugged into them, possibly including your server — we can not check it.” […] the agents took entire server racks, perhaps because they mistakenly thought that “one enclosure is = to one server,” he said in an e-mail.
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Mr. Ostroumow said that the F.B.I. was only interested in one of the company’s clients but had taken servers used by “tens of clients.” He wrote: “After F.B.I.’s unprofessional ‘work’ we can not restart our own servers, that’s why our website is offline and support doesn’t work.” The company’s staff had been working to solve the problem for the previous 15 hours, he said.[…]
It is not clear what the F.B.I. was looking for, or whether the raid was in response to recent attacks by hacker groups on corporate and government sites.
The sites of the Curbed Network, including popular blogs covering real estate, restaurants and other topics, were all unavailable Tuesday evening. Lockhart Steele, Curbed’s president, said his team realized that the company’s sites were down at around 3 a.m. and contacted DigitalOne. After initially declining to say what had happened, DigitalOne explained that the F.B.I. had raided the data center, Mr. Steele said.
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The raid also affected a server used by Instapaper, a popular service that saves articles for later reading. Marco Arment, Instapaper’s founder, said he lost contact with a server hosted by DigitalOne early on Tuesday. Instapaper’s Web site is still operating but has slowed somewhat. Mr. Arment said he had not heard from DigitalOne or law enforcement, and had no reason to believe that Instapaper was a target of the raid.
Pinboard, a bookmarking site, was operating on a backup server and some of its features were turned off, a post on its site said.
A government official who declined to be named said earlier in the day that the F.B.I. was actively investigating the Lulz Security group and any affiliated hackers. The official said the F.B.I. had teamed up with other agencies in this effort, including the Central Intelligence Agency and cybercrime bureaus in Europe.
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