Too slow! FBI Shuts Down Hosting Service

Chope writes "If FBI agents showed up at your data center bearing a warrant, would you be able to provide them prompt access to customer data? BZZZZT! I'm sorry, but you've taken too long to answer. We'll be confiscating all the hardware you use, er, used to use, to run your business. But we'll get it back to you 'real soon now.' Thank you for playing. CarrierHotels.com is carrying the story of a FBI raid on a web hosting company. When the hosting company didn't and/or couldn't provide the information the FBI was looking from its several terabytes of data within "several hours", the FBI decided it was more "efficient" to seize all the web servers and customer data as part of the FBI's investigation of a hacking incident."

Comments

All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[Anonymous Coward]

someone had to say it..

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[LittleBigLui]

someone had to say it..

... and judging by the finely crafted grammar, bush did. :)

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[GodBlessTexas]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the FBI has been doing this in computer crime cases since the last few years of the Clinton administration under that bastion of civil liberties (nevermind Waco, Ruby Ridge, or Elian Gonzalez) Janet Reno, and it didn't require several TB of potential evidence to make it happen.

The FBI will attempt to work with any provider in order to get the data they need to investigate a crime. If that is impossible to do in a 'reasonable amount of time' they have little choice but to confiscate the equipment in order to copy the existing data from the machines to conduct a forensic investigation. A reasonable amount of time is generally a couple of hours to a day. Believe me, the last thing some poor special agent wants to do is sift through TBs of customer crap and put a company out of business or under financial hardship.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[sjames]

Doing some simple math, with a decentish disk controller, it will take 3 hours just to stream 1TB from disk to /dev/null. That assumes that the data is perfectly sequential and that no 'analysis' (such as accessing in a filewise manner, looking for a particular name of other data within the stream, etc).

Touching the data at all will easily double that to 6 hours. Add in more time because the volume is probably archival (read slower) rather than being set up as an enterprise DB system. Add even more since the server has other things to do running the business.

Most likely, what they were after was logs. Logs tend to be optimized to be stored quickly rather than for fast access. After all, logs are being stored constantly, but unless something unexplained is going wrong, they aren't analyzed at all. When they are analyzed, it's usually one of a handful of standard reports (such as logins, changes to suid, etc) and is only done over a reletivly short span of time.

Given the above, and that there were multiple TB of data to sift, it is not even vaguely reasonable to expect a complete result in less than several days.

If this report is even vaguely factual, I sincerely hope the person who made the decision to sieze is forced to spend the remaining years of his career in the basement sifting through endless lines of:

1337 d00d> D000dZ! I R s0 1337!

To the best of my knowledge, there is no posibility of an all encompassing regular expression that can translate 1337 to english.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[DarkMan]

To the best of my knowledge, there is no posibility of an all encompassing regular expression that can translate 1337 to english.

Not a perfect translation, no.

However, with a context free grammar (!) and some herustics with a spell checking engine, you can get conversion to something that is much more readable.

For example, I ran

1337 d00d> D000dZ! I R s0 1337!

through my munging engine and got

leet dude> Dudes! I are so leet!

(I prefer to leave 1337 as leet, cos I don't think it's really transatable to formal english.) It's not perfect, but the time to read drops down to something approaching printed english.

More relevently, as one can learn to read 1337 and other forms of munged english to the same speed as normal text, this step drastically cuts the learning time down, to about 20 minutes (for me, anyway).

So, what you say was strictly correct, but for practical purposes, the majority of it can be fixed. Certinally, for review by people not familar with it, it's handy. Still needs to have the original check, of course, but that would always have to happen anyway.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[Zeinfeld]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the FBI has been doing this in computer crime cases since the last few years of the Clinton administration under that bastion of civil liberties (nevermind Waco, Ruby Ridge, or Elian Gonzalez) Janet Reno, and it didn't require several TB of potential evidence to make it happen

I remember exchanging emails with Timothy McVeigh who murdered 270 people in Oaklahoma. He murdered those people because of this type of crank theory. We have put up with this right wing crank politics for too long.

The fact is that the Waco loonies killed themselves, the Ruby Ridge guy was responsible for everything that happened and Elian Gonzalez should be back with his father. Castro is almost 80, not many dictators make it to 90 and are still in power. By the time Elian leaves school Castro will be dead. But I can see why a bunch of right wing cranks who talk big about the importance of family would think it would be better that he is kidnapped by a bunch of his relatives looking to exploit him for political purposes than grow up with his father.

Sure the FBI has done a lot of things that are stupid or outright corrupt. Hoover used the FBI to persue his own vendettas, he refused to prosecute the mafia. That does not mean that the federal government is at fault in every case and it certainly does not mean that the events cited by right wing cranks are proof of abuse. The persecution of Charlie Chaplin and John Lenon were abuses. If some nut gets some guns, holes himself up someplace and threatens to shoot members of law enforcement who might be looking to arrest him, well anyone who gets shot is primarily their responsibility, same way that 9/11 is primarily the responsibiliy of Al Zawahiri and his frat boy friend Bin-Laden. Sure the CIA and FBI screwed up big with 9-11, Freah's people thought the war on drugs was a higher priority than terrorism. But keep perspective here.

Believe me, the last thing some poor special agent wants to do is sift through TBs of customer crap and put a company out of business or under financial hardship.

Absolutely right, unless there is an ulterior motive. That is not very likely in this case. If the FBI were investigating planned parenthood or another group that John Ashcroft is opposed to politically there might be an issue. There has been a lot of suspicious uses of the IRS against political opponents under Bush II. Ashcroft has endorsed a lot of extra-constitutional activites but so far the FBI under Muller does not seem to be a problem.

I suspect what happened in this particular case is that the agents thought that the hosting provider were simply not interested in complying. They probably met a sysadmin that gave them some attitude.

What we need here is a better way of serving this type of intercept warrant so that the parameters of the search are predetermined and understood by the court. We have this for IM intercepts so it should be possible to define it for IRC

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[Tackhead]

> Believe me, the last thing some poor special agent wants to do is sift through TBs of customer crap and put a company out of business or under financial hardship.

First part true. Separating the wheat from the chaff is a pain and slows the investigation. (Unless you can use the wheat for future investigations, but the Agents aren't getting paid to go on fishing expeditions yet.)

Second part untrue. What makes you think the Agents gives a flying fsck through a rolling doughnut about collateral damage to some business he's never heard of and isn't paid to protect?

I mean, what's the collateral damage gonna do? Sue an Agent? (Score +6, Funny) Sue the Agent's employer? (Score +7, Hysterical) And what if through some sick twist of fate, they win such a suit? (Score -8, Witness of Evolution In Action).

There's three kinds of people in the world. Cops, perps, and perps who haven't been caught. Power corrupts, but power without accountability is an awful lot of fun.

If you're in college, consider majoring in Criminal Justice and joining the winning side. You can be under the gun, or you can hold the gun. Better to be a killer than a victim.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[rudedog]

Given that Randy Weaver's wife was shot at Ruby Ridge in August 1992, I'm wondering how this is Bill Clinton's and Janet Reno's fault. Or was Bill somehow responsible for this even while he was still governor of Arkansas?

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[ikeleib]

Believe me, the last thing some poor special agent wants to do is sift through TBs of customer crap and put a company out of business or under financial hardship.

It's far more serious than simply putting a financial hardship on the data center and their customers. It is entirely possible that the FBI has gone beyond the authority granted to them in the warrant. Their warrant only allows them to search and sieze specific items related to a crime.

It is highly likely that by siezing all machines and data of a commercial data center, that they have deprived several customer of their due process of law (5th) and freedom from search and siezure (4th).

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[ivan256]

Absolutely right, unless there is an ulterior motive.

The agent that siezed the equipment probably has a boss who expects to see progress, and that progress is probably propagated up the line to the point where the details have been filtered out and it's just a number on a spreadsheet of how many computer crimes have been procecuted in the last however many days. The ulterior motive is to look like he's being productive in order to keep his job.

As an aside, if you think it's Castro that's still in power in Cuba, you're very naive. Look at the recent events there and you'll see it's clear that those close to him are taking steps to retain power when the man himself is gone. Then again, perhaps you're just one of those left wing cranks (whatever the hell a crank is) that comes to conclusions about what US foreign policy should be based on feelings instead of the painful facts. No wonder congress has to keep bickering about wether we should maintain travel bans and trade sanctions against Cuba.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[Gr8Apes]

Simple math:

LVD SCSI: 3.5 hours
U160: 1.75 hours
U320: 45 min

This is assuming maximum transmission speeds across a single bus. I would hope that TB of data would be on properly organized RAID arrays, and thus would span across multiple SCSI buses, and thus, creating a mirror of said data, while not cheap, should not take on the order of more than a couple of hours, provided hardware is available.

Place the cost of that against the cost of shutting you down, and it's pretty obvious which one you want. Then again, I'm astounded that the FBI would shut down a business.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[planetmn]

No wonder congress has to keep bickering about wether we should maintain travel bans and trade sanctions against Cuba.

Because clearly the 40 or so years of sanctions have worked.

Meanwhile, we give most favored nation trading status to China.

-dave

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[fm6]

Waco, Ruby Ridge, Elvis... it's all the same!

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[Rick the Red]

The fact is that the Waco loonies killed themselves, the Ruby Ridge guy was responsible for everything that happened and Elian Gonzalez should be back with his father.

The facts in the Waco case are in dispute by eye witnesses. The bottom line is that if the FBI listened to their advisers (who urged restraint) instead of the politicians (who wanted it wrapped up quickly), those people would still be alive today.

Randy Weaver (the "Ruby Ridge guy") was not responsible for the deaths, the FBI was. An Idaho court found this to be true, but as federal agents the people responsible were not answerable to a state court and they literally got away with murder.

The rules at the time were that any Cuban who made it to USA soil was eligible for asylum.

Buy why am I even discussing this with someone who exchanges emails with mass murderers? Or did you lie about that, too?

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[Wateshay]

I love how those on the left (not to say there aren't those on the right who do the same thing) see it as troubling if the FBI abuses their power when dealing with left-aligned groups (like planned parenthood or John Lennon), but it's ok if it involves those on the right (like the "gun nut" at Ruby Ridge, or the Cuban expatriats in Miami). Personally, I think they're all troubling, and to say that the FBI under Ashcroft is any worse than the FBI under Reno is pretty naive, IMHO.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[hchaos]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the FBI has been doing this in computer crime cases since the last few years of the Clinton administration under that bastion of civil liberties (nevermind Waco, Ruby Ridge, or Elian Gonzalez) Janet Reno, and it didn't require several TB of potential evidence to make it happen.

I love to be the bearer of bad news, and you really need to check your dates. The Ruby Ridge incident happened in 1992, during the previous Bush administration. Unless, of course, this is all just a troll.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[HiThere]

If you think Reno was a leftist, you need a bit of study.

That said, yes, it's worse. A part of the reason is things like the "Patriot" act, which mean they don't have to care, even more than they already didn't have to care. Another part is that an entrenched authority has an inbuilt tendency to get more authoritarian (there are other tendencies, leading to other forms of corruption, also). If you wanted to reform the FBI, you would need to make them accountable for their actions. You would probably also need to replace the entire upper echelon of management. (There might be honorable & flexible individuals, but you couldn't identify them.)

Still, you are correct when you say that the left is no better than the right. That's not where the problem lies. Concentration of power into people who aren't held accountable for the misuse of it is the problem.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[Noren]

The fact is that the Waco loonies killed themselves, the Ruby Ridge guy was responsible for everything that happened and Elian Gonzalez should be back with his father. Castro is almost 80, not many dictators make it to 90 and are still in power. By the time Elian leaves school Castro will be dead. But I can see why a bunch of right wing cranks who talk big about the importance of family would think it would be better that he is kidnapped by a bunch of his relatives looking to exploit him for political purposes than grow up with his father.

The fact is that the Federal government used flammable military tear gas soon before the fire in which 80 people died, and then lied about doing so consistently for six years after the fact. The fact is that the FBI section chief in charge of an internal investigation on the Ruby Ridge incident pled guilty to obstruction of justice, admitting he'd ordered all the FBI's on-scene accounts of the actual incident destroyed. (The Ruby Ridge incident occured during Daddy Bush's term, anyhow) On the other hand, I agree for the most part with the government's actions in the Gonzalez case.

The existence of right wing cranks is not proof of abuse, but it is also not proof of innocence on the part of the FBI.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[Leomania]

Low-end hosting often doesn't work that way; I know because I've been on the receiving end of no backups recently. Someone buys a dedicated server with a particular configuration from the data center, and sells reseller or shared hosting to a lot of other people. The data is very often only on the disk(s) on that system; backups are often not done depending upon how much the purchaser of the dedicated server wanted to pay.

Other people who provide hosting services do take advantage of the backup capability offered by the data center, but it is seldom more often than once per week. If the feds wanted fresh logfiles, the only way to get them would be to go to the machines themselves; if they want older ones, the data center would need to have a mechanism to quickly go the the correct backup file(s) and extract just the pertinent ones. That is not a process that most places have down to a science.

What I'm surprised at is that they thought it would be more efficient to do this themselves. You'd think they'd send in their forensic folks and work with the admins to get what they needed. A few hours is not enough time, but a couple of days you'd think might.

- Leo

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[John Courtland]

Leet is a derivative of Elite (or eleet, or 31337). I suppose if you wanted real English words thats the answer you are looking for.

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[Shakrai]

Unfortuantly, neither of these are true. Due process is removed when a legal warrent has been disclosed. Also, the 4th amendment, search and siezure, is only disallowed when there is no warrent.

I think his point was that the warrant didn't cover the other few dozen customers who also had data on these hard drives/arrays.

If the cops come busting into my local gym because somebody told them that Locker #514 has dope in it and they have a warrant to search said locker can they seize the entire bank of lockers because the owner couldn't find the key in time? Could they then charge me (the user of locker #515) if they found something incriminating in my locker when they never had permission to search it in the first place?

Think about it along those lines. What if they found pirated software (or god forbid the MS Source Code) or kiddie porn on an account that they weren't interested in and didn't have a warrant for? Can they then charge that guy or open an investigation?

Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft

[John Courtland]

Well, being Elite (in the 31337 sense) means you're on top of your cracking/hacking game. That sort of makes sense if you correlate that with the term elite, being someone better than most/all others.

and....

[Digitus1337]

and who says they abuse their power? (I wouldn't...)

In response to a hacking incident?

[mehaiku]

Oh my, which one our corporate overlords were offended this time?

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[ScottGant]

If everything was shut down, how come http://www.cithosting.com/ is still up and running? If all the equipment was taken, wouldn't the web page that's being shown on that site be gone...shouldn't it be hard to connect to anything on that site at all?

The fact is, this story is old because the FBI has already started returning the equipment back as of yesterday. The FBI confiscated everything on the 14th. CIT's web site says:

02/23/2004 CIT re-establishes service.

We have restored service at Equinix's Chicago Data Centers. We are in the same facilities as MSN and many fortune 500 companies. The facility has multi OC192 connections to the backbone.

The FBI has begun retuning equipment to CIT which is being shipped to our new facilities in Chicago.
At this time CIT will continue to provide dedicated DDOS Protected web hosting only.

Yes, the FBI overstepped they're bounds and yes it's frightening to think of this happening...but let's not get the facts wrong. The story here on Slashdot made is seem like the equipment was seized and the FBI probably won't be returning it, which isn't the case.

When reporting the crap that the US Gov throws at us, don't embelish...just report what is known and not a lot of speculation.

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[Ian Wolf]

I don't believe the headline overstated anything. The FBI's track record for returning anything seized is appalling.

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[Snaller]

Yes, the FBI overstepped they're bounds and yes it's frightening to think of this happening...but let's not get the facts wrong. The story here on Slashdot made is seem like the equipment was seized and the FBI probably won't be returning it, which isn't the case.


Bullshit - it reported about another step towards the police state in the US - nobody said anything about not getting it back. But by previous accounts they never care much about getting it back.

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is routine, however, that the FBI or police seize computer equipment and never return it. So it was reasonable to assume that this was the case here (they still haven't returned 100% of the equipment anyway). It's not obviously stated under the law one's rights when this happens, nor are there limits to how long your equipment can be held (so far as I know). This is a huge problem.

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[orthogonal]

The fact is, this story is old because the FBI has already started returning the equipment back as of yesterday. The FBI confiscated everything on the 14th. CIT's web site says:

02/23/2004 CIT re-establishes service.

Hey, look, I tried my best, by submitting this three days ago:

2004-02-21 09:18:16 FBI confisticates (sic) ISP's servers: "more efficie (articles,usa) (rejected)

and it was rejected in about thirty minutes.

Maybe I should write more sensationalistic submissions? ;) Or to be fair, maybe it's because I misspelled "confiscate". But aren't they supposed to be editors -- oh! never mind! Ah, I guess Chope needed the Karma more than I did.

But seriously folks, yeah, the FBI is returning the equipment now, but how much damage was done to an innocent ISP just because the FBI couldn't figure out how to do on-site data mining?

And if searching for evidence on a computer requires the FBI to physically cart the equipment to some distant lab, I guess we just write off any expectation that they'll be able to find data quickly in an emergency -- like, just off the top of my head here, for instance, wholly unlikely I'm sure, an imminent terrorist act?

Well, maybe a business got ruined, maybe the FBI can't scan data quickly enough to stop a terrorist crime in progress, but at least we all feel safer now that arch-criminal Tommy Chong is in jail.

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[Angry_Admin]

There's an old line saying the only way they'll be able to enforce all of these laws is to make a police state.

Regarding the seizure of equipment, though. Why on Earth would they bother taking all of that equipment off-line to conduct their investigation? Whenever I deal with Federal level investigators, they always make an image of the hard drive and work off of that. They NEVER work off of the hard drives, themselves.

If it was just a "hacking incident", then they should be able to accomplish everything they want by working off of those images.

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[Anonymous Coward]

But seriously folks, yeah, the FBI is returning the equipment now, but how much damage was done to an innocent ISP just because the FBI couldn't figure out how to do on-site data mining?
I'm sorry to break this to you all, but this hosting provider is far from innocent. This particular provider has been a PITA for the major IRC networks for a long time due to the amount of DoS drone nets being held on private ircds hosted by foonet. Good riddance, and applause to the feds for finally dealing with this.

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[orthogonal]

So who's being senationalistic (sic) now? There is nothing in TFA about the FBI being too incompetant (sic) to datamine on-site. Spare us, please.

According to the ISP's original notice, the FBI tried to access the data on site for several hours, before giving up and carting the servers to the FBI labs.

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[caseydk]

Regarding the seizure of equipment, though. Why on Earth would they bother taking all of that equipment off-line to conduct their investigation? Whenever I deal with Federal level investigators, they always make an image of the hard drive and work off of that. They NEVER work off of the hard drives, themselves.

Exactly, in order to establish the non-tamperedness of the hardware, they *MUST* work off the images instead of actual. Imagine if some bad/new tech accidentally did a "rm -Rf". If they worked on the originals, then they could easily claim that the company did it.

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[Atryn]

I guess "real soon now" should have read "9 days"?

My guess is that as these folks provide dedicated hosting for companies concered about DDOS attacks, the web sites they host probably don't like to be offline for a few hours much less 9 days. So 9 days is a VERY long time. I would bet they will lose some clients over this, regardless of whose "fault" it was.

Re:In response to a hacking incident?

[aonaran]

I seriously doubt they'd retain enough clients to stay in business after a 9 day outage.

I'm sure that it's also quite hard on some of the clients. Depending on the business you are in being offline for over a week can be quite a stress on the business. The smart ones will have their own backups and will find another data centre to get them back online, but the odds of them switching back, I think, would be very slim.

More to the story

[OPTiX_iNC]

I'm sure there is more to the story than what we are hearing...

I wonder what the FBI was looking for.

Re:More to the story

[MisanthropicProggram]

I don't know why your were modded down to -1, but I had the same thought. I haven't seen this story picked up on any other news outlet yet. And the article was posted on Feb 19th! What's going on here.

Re:More to the story

[millahtime]

I bet there is more to the story than we are hearing. There was a search warrent from the "United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio"

To get a search warrent you have to have something to go on already.

Re:More to the story

[Ian Wolf]

A search warrant is one thing, shutting down a private enterprise because a couple agents got impatient or paranoid is another issue entirely.

We keep hearing about liberal judges this and liberal judges that in the media, but there are just as many conservative judges giving law enforcement rubber stamps on warrants.

Re:More to the story

[millahtime]

There is a lot that is not being said. Such as, did CIT cooperate? Did they obviously stall or with hold information? Did they claim to not have records they obviously had? This is not the whole story and maybe the only alternative to getting the information was to take the equipment. Maybe CIT gave them no alternative. We are speculating based on one sides point of view.

Moderators: I know this may be redundant but I was responding to his comment. He obviously didn't read the 50 posts in front of this one.

Re:More to the story

[dotmaudot]

I haven't seen this story picked up on any other news outlet yet
Maybe you looked at the wrong sources :-) Anyway, if you are interested in knowing more, have a look at the records at SPEWS . ciao, .mau.

Re:More to the story

[Alranor]

"The phrase

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

is widely attributed to Voltaire, but cannot be found in his writings. With good reason. The phrase was invented by a later author as an epitome of his attitude. It appeared in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall under the pseudonym S[tephen] G. Tallentyre."

(from here )

Re:More to the story

[gertsenl]

If you consider 2600 a news outlet, then you'll be glad to know that Off the Hook spent quite some time last week talking about the incident.

Re:More to the story

[AntiOrganic]

While we're randomly throwing around Googled websites to get to the bottom of this quote issue, how about this one?

"Then along comes Norbert Guterman to claim that what Voltaire _did_ write in a letter of February [6,] 1770 to a M. Le Riche was: 'Monsieur l'Abbe, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.' So, whether or not he used the precise words, at least Voltaire believed in the principle behind them."

Re:More to the story

[Ian Wolf]

I read every single one, fine thank you. The article too.

Maybe we are only getting half the story, and maybe we are getting all of it. The difference is that I am relying on the information I do have and you are relying on information that _must_ exist, but have no proof of because you can't believe that this kind of thing would happen otherwise.

I believe it is entirely possible that the FBI acted in such a manner because they felt that CIT was either stalling or even destroying evidence. I can only assume that they presented this theory to a judge, backed it up with some evidence and got the warrant. However, all of that is speculation.

I worked in the legal system on both sides of the coin as a paralegal before I saw the light and switched to IT. I can only go on my personal experience when I say that this could indeed be the whole story. I have personally seen judges rubber stamp warrants with zero evidence and I have seen judges refuse to sign warrants with all kinds of evidence. I have seen law enforcement officials embellish and even fabricate evidence for the purpose of getting a warrant and I've seen law enforcement officials vehemently defend a defendant's rights.

My point in the previous post, may have been a little incendiary, but the point is DO NOT discount the story simply because you think there MUST be more to it, when it could simply be all there is to it.

Re:More to the story

[Frater 219]

Anyway, if you are interested in knowing more, have a look at the records at SPEWS

Ah. That explains a lot. The anti-spam folks (including SPEWS) have been trying to bring this ISP's child-porn-spammer problem to their attention for months. It hadn't worked; the child porn stayed up on their servers and the spammers kept blasting ads for it to all and sundry -- including a very worried biologist at my site, who wanted to know why he seemed to be on some spammer's list of paedophiles?

By the time the FBI got around to investigating, the ISP had probably (as "bulletproof bulker hosting" ISPs usually do) told their spammer customer that they were taking fire. Under those circumstances, the FBI's move was probably a good one -- to keep the child-porn spammers from deleting all their files and hiding their traces.

Re:More to the story

[pcraven]

I wrote a letter to a DA once about a slashdot story. I was really irritated that the DA would prosecute someone who was just demonstrating how a security hole worked for a company.

Several months later, I got a letter from the DA. Now she could talk about it, as the case was over. Turns out the guy pleaded guilty. He not only had demonstrated the hole, but before he had been running all over the company network doing stuff that was clearly not legal. I felt like such a heel writing a letter of support for this sod.

This story, of course, was never posted by Slashdot to my knowledge.

So while I do not discount the story, I'll start by asking for more information, and not by calling the FBI a bunch of jerks. (I'll do that later when I have more info, and am reasonably sure I won't stick my foot in my mouth.)

Re:More to the story

[Viv]

There's almost certainly more to the story. I've had some experience with FBI "raids" where I used to work. It was a semi-large hosting provider in south Florida. I worked there from about 1999-2002. In that time, we had FBI "visits" at least 5 times in that time period because of nasty stuff our customers were doing.

Not ONCE did the FBI leave the property with our machines. The key was cooperation. The FBI agents knew what would happen if they left with our equipment, and knew that we would do everything in our power to help them get the job done without having to resort to that.

Heck, I even showed them better ways to get data off of the machine. We had a good working relationship. They'd show up with the warrant/subpoena, we'd go pull the machine that had the data they wanted. We'd assign one of our technicians (usually me) to help them copy everything over. They'd be out the door with whatever data it was they needed by the end of the day on hard disks they brought onsite with them.

The fact that the FBI left with their machines indicates to me that the provider did something stupid to piss off the agents. They probably made everything as difficult as they possibly could, and the FBI agents got sick of it, and said, "Screw this, I can get this done in the lab without all of this bullshit."... and then they did it.

In my experience, most law enforcement (especially FBI) consider themselves professionals. Usually, they're not out to get you personally, they're just out to do their job. If you don't make their day any harder than necessary, they're not going to make YOUR day any harder than necessary.

So to the extent that you feel you can, MAKE THEIR DAY EASIER. They'll tend to do the same.

Poor hosting company

[Anonymous Coward]

The poor hosting company probably has ToS to live up to. This will ruin them.

If nothing is found, will they have any recourse against the FBI or are they screwed?

Re:Poor hosting company

[LostCluster]

The poor hosting company probably has ToS to live up to. This will ruin them.

Law always beats a ToS. If the FBI comes with a warrant for a piece of customer data, you've got to turn it over even if your ToS/Privacy Policy says you won't. To avoid getting caught in this jam, include a statement saying you'll turn over anything to any authority who presents a proper warrant.

If their business was based on not turning anything over to the spooks, well, so much for that idea.

Re:Poor hosting company

[carou]

If their business was based on not turning anything over to the spooks, well, so much for that idea.

I think the parent was probably referring to uptime guarantees, which the confiscation of equipment has caused the ISP to fail on, rather than anything to do with data privacy.

Re:Poor hosting company

[Ath]

And for the other customers, the FBI raid is a non-issue.

Basically, if they guarantee MY server's uptime, and MY server is confiscated due to them not providing the data on another customer (important point) in time, THEY pay ME. Their fault.

Wrong. There is a clear common law legal principle that is considered inherent in contracts. You cannot contract anything that is a violation of the law.

In this situation, the facts are rather murky. If the hosting company was the cause of the FBI seizure then you might have a contractual violation. But the hosting company cannot be held to have violated its ToS because the FBI made a unilateral decision to seize equipment. The alternative that you suggest is that the hosting company resist compliance with the search warrant and ultimately the seizure. You, as a customer, cannot insist on that...no matter what your contract says.

How about the sustained financial damage?

[devilkin]

And what if you run your website on those servers for commercial use? Will the FBI refund the finanial damage you suffered (e.g. when you run a webshop or smthing)?

Re:How about the sustained financial damage?

[cybermace5]

What if a criminal escaped onto the street where your brick-and-mortar shop was located, and they closed down a several-block radius for as long as it took to find him? You think they should compensate all the businesses that were affected?

Re:How about the sustained financial damage?

[ca1v1n]

They don't do that, except in cases of people believed to be dangerous, and then only for a very short period of time. That's the point. They went WAY too far in this case.

Re:How about the sustained financial damage?

[R.Caley]

The closest model I can think of would be the Steve Jackson Games case where they got damages, eventually.

Of course, that was a long time ago, these days they would probably just have sent anyone suspected of having a copy of Illuminati to Guantanamo.

Re:How about the sustained financial damage?

[chrisbtoo]

Do they close the several-block-radios for ten days?

Damn, that's a big radio.

Not fast enough

[RedShoeRider]

"the FBI determined that it was more efficient (from their point of view) to remove all of our servers and transport them to the FBI local laboratories for inspection,"

Ok, so it's faster to have to unplug all of the servers, carry them out of the building, put them on a truck, drive them several (dozens?) of miles, unload them from the truck, put them in a warehouse, re-plug them all in, and now have to datamine without the assistance of the people who operate the systems.

Was I abducted by aliens and brought to Bizarro world while I slept last night, or am I just missing something here?

Re:Not fast enough

[whathappenedtomonday]

you know, whenever europeans read such stories, there comes that awful feeling again - that something within the US must be terribly wrong and - what is more - only a few people seem to care or even notice.

Was I abducted by aliens and brought to Bizarro world

no need to bring you there - and no aliens involved, either ;)

see the link in my sig if you care to see how the authorities made such things possible.
(check each of the "14 Defining Characteristics" you recognize, count checks and post your results ;)

Re:Not fast enough

[Handpaper]

re-plug them all in
Never. Hard drives are forensically examined by being removed from their machines and duplicated (usually using dd). No investigator would ever boot a machine which is the subject of an investigation - auto-deletion scripts are just too easy to write.

But... But... But

[Anonymous Coward]

"if you don't have anything to hide or have not done anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about[TM]"

or something like that? I wonder how their other clients feel?

FBI??

[Ratface]

If the FBI shoed up at my door... there would be a hell of an international incident as I live in Sweden (you insensitive clod!)

I wonder...

[millahtime]

if CIT might have been uncooperative. This article is very one sided and if it was taking hours and they weren't seeing it get anywhere then there might have been a legitimate problem. I don't know if taking the servers was the best solution but if they did it then there must have been something going on.

script kiddy and spam proxy heaven

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year I found the a controller of the proxy that was installed on a NT workstation happened to be controlled out of the same data center that was shut down. That machine was telling the NT box to send out massive amounts of spam.

This is about the last data center on earth where script-kiddies can get free shell accounts.

This is a case were many servers got caught in the crossfire aginst the script kiddies and spamers.

Website of Mass Destruction?

[ka9dgx]

What were they looking for, a Website of Mass Destruction or something?

--Mike--

Nazis? - I hate Illinois Nazis

There's gotta be more to this

[queen of everything]

There has to be more to this story. From what the article says, the FBI just walked in and shut them down. While that might have happened this story seems to be extremely one sided and a little short on the detail.

Initially, I don't like the sound of it at all given that I host several domains and don't want the FBI coming in and taking all of my servers. But, we don't know what led up to the seizure....maybe it was a legitimate action? We shouldn't judge too harshly until we have all the information. I'm trying to play devil's advocate here.

Re:There's gotta be more to this

[shyster]

Yeah, the more of the story is pretty well detailed in the WHT forums.

Rumors have ben flying for quite awhile that Paul (the owner) was either involved or turned a blind eye to DDoS drones on his network. Some rumors stated that he's DDoS competitors to prove the superiority of CITHosting's DDoS hardened servers.

Seeing as this "data center" seems to have been his basement, I'd bet his (lack of) logs, records, and monitoring left the FBI little choice but to seize the whole thing. And, we can assume he was uncooperative as he may have been involved or at least knoweledgeable.

The general reputation of Foonet also seemed to be a bit on the black hat side. No doubt there may have been some legitimate customers as well, but they seem to be known more for their spammers and script kiddies (and cheap shell accounts) than for their legitimate webhosting.

All in all, it looks to me like the FBI did what it had to do to effectively process the warrant. They were evidently going after a network, not a specific machine. Unfortunately, some legitimate customers got caught up in it.

It looks like CTIHosting was recently sold, and is being moved to a new data center in Chicago. Let's hope that it comes back as a legitimate business this time. They've already stated that IRC will be down indefinitely, so that's a good sign.

What kind of sick joke is this?

[elchulopadre]

First their webserver farm gets seized by the FBI, then you post their story on /. ??? Give these guys a break!

um...

[boogy nightmare]

I would be more worried about the fact that rather than being supplied with the data that they originally requested, they now potentially have the logs/records/recordings/information of all the transactions and customer records and IRC conversations ever hosted by this...

Will they delete the 'copied' data after they have finished, keeping only the information that they originally wanted, please this is v bad...

Thank God i dont live in the US

Full Text

[Anonymous Coward]

FBI Shutters Web Host

By Rich Miller
Carrier Hotels Editor
Posted Feb 19, 2004

If FBI agents showed up at your data center bearing a warrant, would you be able to provide them prompt access to customer data? How long would it take?

That's an important question in the wake of an FBI raid of Columbus, Ohio hosting company CIT Hosting last Saturday. Federal agents wound up shutting down the entire operation, seizing all the company's web servers and all customer data as part of its investigation of a hacking incident.

CIT Hosting, also known as FooNet, markets itself as "the leader in the IRC and DDoS protection business for the last 5 years." The company posted a web page informing customers that its data center was shut down, and instructing customers to contact the FBI if they needed access to their files.

"The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host," the company said in its statement.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a live chat system that allows users to create private discussion rooms. While IRC has a lengthy history of legitimate use, it is also a medium for discreet communication between hackers. CIT said the FBI was "investigating whether someone hosted on our network hacked and attacked someone else."

"After several hours of attempting to track down, inspect and audit the terabytes of data that we host, the FBI determined that it was more efficient (from their point of view) to remove all of our servers and transport them to the FBI local laboratories for inspection," the statement continued. "The FBI has assured us that as soon as the data has been safely copied and inspected, the equipment will be promptly returned. Unfortunately, the FBI has not been able to tell us when they will be completed with their inspection."

The seizure isn't standard procedure, and there's no way to know exactly what prompted it. CIT's account suggests the FBI may have lost patience with the process. The IRC-focused nature of CIT's business may also have been a factor.

But if you're a data center operator, you want to avoid any scenario in which the FBI gets impatient and starts hauling away your servers. Just one more item on the contingency planning checklist for the times in which we live.

Re:Over the top anyone?

[BigDork1001]

This is the US we're talking about. We sue everyone for everything. In fact I just might sue you for implying we wouldn't sue.

Grass roots report

[rf0]

Its worth reading this thread
Rus

more important (?) how much customer data stored?

[buzban]

IDNRADC (I do not run a data center), but don't let that stop me from making a completely unqualified comment ;) ....

Perhaps just as important, or more important, are you storing customer data that could/should be regularly deleted? Not that burning everything when the FBI shows up is the best option, but having a sensible scheme for what needs to be stored, and what would be better deleted and overwritten, seems to me to be important...

Returning Equipment

[millahtime]

There is an article here that tells that equipment is already being returned.

Look! I'm whoring!

[teamhasnoi]

From their site - don't forget to let the FBI know what you think! rwhite3@leo.gov

02/23/2004 CIT re-establishes service.

We have restored service at Equinix's Chicago Data Centers. We are in the same facilities as MSN and many fortune 500 companies. The facility has multi OC192 connections to the backbone.

The FBI has begun retuning equipment to CIT which is being shipped to our new facilities in Chicago.
At this time CIT will continue to provide dedicated DDOS Protected web hosting only.

CIT provides reliable and scalable solutions for customers of all sizes and services. Located in Equinix's Chicago Data Centers , CIT has access to all the major carriers without the need for local loop circuits.

Our Chicago staff is focused first and foremost on customer satisfaction, and will take every action necessary to accommodate each customer. Unlike many large ISPs, CIT prides itself in its ability to provide personalized service to each customer - if a customer calls twice for assistance, they can usually speak to the same representative. Our sales and support teams are allowed a great deal of flexibility to work together to resolve each customer's needs on an individual basis. Our success and rapid growth can be attributed to the satisfaction of our customers - word-of-mouth referrals account for a large portion of the new business we receive each month.

The IRC Network will remain down until further notice.

02/14/2004 FBI Confiscates all servers

Dear Customers of FOONET/CIT:

We regret to inform you that on Saturday February 14, 2004 at approximately 8:35 am EST, FOONET/CIT's data center in Columbus, Ohio temporarily ceased operations.

Here are the facts of what occurred:

The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host. According to the warrant, it appears that the Bureau is investigating whether someone hosted on our network hacked and attacked someone else.

After several hours of attempting to track down, inspect and audit the terabytes of data that we host, the FBI determined that it was more efficient (from their point of view) to remove all of our servers and transport them to the FBI local laboratories for inspection. This was completed at 7:00 pm EST same day.

The FBI has assured us that as soon as the data has been safely copied and inspected, the equipment will be promptly returned. Unfortunately, the FBI has not been able to tell us when they will be completed with their inspection.

We have been told by the Special Agent in charge of the investigation that If you need access to your data you are asked to please contact the Bureau via email to rwhite3@leo.gov. Make sure to include in your email your name, mailing address, and telephone number with area code.

Since we wish to focus 100% of our efforts on restoring services, we would appreciate it very much if you do not attempt to contact us directly. Please rest assured that we are doing everything possible to restore service to you as quickly as possible.
To the many who have inquired, Paul and family are OK, although shaken by these events. They are at home and awaiting the blessed event of their new child's birth. We thank you for your good wishes and prayers.

Please check back here often. Through this site, we will keep you informed of ongoing developments as we know them.

Thanks again for your understanding.

Re:and....Absentee landlords.

[Anonymous Coward]

Marked troll already. That's slashdot for you.
Anyway this incident illustrates why the citizentry needs to be active in government instead of reactionary and "woe is me" after the fact. The government isn't very good at self-disciplining. That's our job. An absentee citizentry breds the results you see. Get out and vote in 2004. Get involved in local and national politics. Stop being a wallflower.

What really sucks....

[Ghostx13]

Is that if the FBI, ATF, *BI, or whoever seizes your property in the investigation of a crime, they are in no way liable for any damage that occurs to your property, if you can even consider it your property anymore, because, even if your property was deemed to have NOTHING to do with the crime being investigated, said above entities are not required to return your property. You have to SUE to get it back. Now how's that for some bullshit.

DOS

[MikeFarrington]

Ironically, they were probably investigating a Denial Of Service.

The FBI is already returning some equipment...

[shyster]

Looks like the seizure occurred on 02/14, and that as of 2/23 some servers have already been shipped back and put back on-line. As of now, their IRC network is still down...though it's unclear whether that's due to an FBI decision, the FBI still having their servers, or a CITHosting decision.

The only thing I find a bit odd about this whole thing is that it looks like they too the opportunity to relocate their data center to Chicago (it was previously in Cleveland). According to their news,

The FBI has begun retuning equipment to CIT which is being shipped to our new facilities in Chicago.

Wouldn't that unnecessarily delay the process of restoring service to their customers? Was the move already planned, or did they suddenly decide that they needed a different data center? Is it possible they're blowing the seize out of proportion in order to cover outages due to their move? Or did the seizure even actually happen?

Seems to blow a hole in the theory..

[Linker3000]

...that 'the powers that be' are monitoring everything 'on the fly', if they need to get their hands on the physical data repository to check it out.

Re:Seems to blow a hole in the theory..

[vegetablespork]

That's exactly what they want you to think. Perhaps they already had sniffed the evidence illegally, and needed to extract it from the servers under the cover of a search warrant in order to subsequently be able to use it in court.

This is all just speculation, naturally, but such a scenario would be very similar to other fourth amendment workarounds--perform broad, illegal searches (e.g. infrared through walls, which is inadmissible in the U.S. without a warrant) to target homes for additional surveillance. From the results of that illegal search, "happen to" notice something "on routine patrol," then get a warrant, and voila`--untainted evidence usable in court.

Financial damage may not be worst...

[millahtime]

what about their reputation for having illegal or compromising people using thier service. That reputation alone may be worse than the downtime.

Steve Jackson Games

[dmoen]

If this case follows the same course as Steve Jackson Games (the Secret Service confiscated most of a business's assets as part of an investigation), then the hosting company may not get their stuff back for years, if ever, and they'll need to fight a court battle.

Doug Moen

Unlawful search and seizure?

[bsDaemon]

We, my comrades, live in dangerous times. It is not the threat of "terrorism," for terrorists do not want to take away our liberty (directly). No, it is the threat of the United States Government. The treat is posed militarily to those outside her boarders, and by gross incroachments on fundimental constitutional rights and liberties against those within her boarders. The 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution is as follows:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
So I say to you: is this not a blatant violation of the US Constitution? The warrent did not say to take the servers, did it? And where are the warrents of TSA people at the airports? where is their probably cause? where are OUR GODGIVEN, CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED freedoms?

Hey Ted! What's this Magic Lantern icon for?

[teamhasnoi]

Perhaps the FBI is installing some evil logger/sniffer crap on the servers or some hidden hardware. Or perhaps I need to watch more episodes of the Lone Gunmen.

I'm surprised that there hasn't been any discussion of Magic Lantern for awhile...

Yes the police can seize things with a warrant

[SmallFurryCreature]

The police and FBI can request from a judge a search warrant wich allows them to take pretty much everything as evidence and they don't have to search for it in a nice way. If they suspect that something is hidden in your sofa you can just as well order a new one. Doesn't matter wether you hid it or someone else did. If it did then all criminals could hide evidence in their neighbours house and be safe.

Wether you find this acceptable depends I guess on wether you find it acceptable that the police can investigate crimes beyond posting a little poster asking criminals to please come to the station and answer their questions and to bring in any evidence on their own.

Normal search warrants on an office mean that the FBI and police storm the building and everyone inside is ordered to stop doing anything. No more accessing PC's no shredding of documents no phone calls no nothing. The reason is simple to prevent evidence from being destroyed.

I am frankly amazed that they even allowed the company to provide the info this shows that they probably don't suspect the company but rather that they hope to find evidence against someone else on their systems.

There was a rather nasty ddos attack on mircx and aniverse. The FBI seems to be investigating wether the IRC network hosted by this company was used in the attack. There seems to be a lot of hints as to the person who was behind the attack but sadly in america you need that silly evidence stuff (at least for use against americans).

So the FBI asked and got a search warrant. They then gave the company time to hand over the data but they couldn't. So the FBI used the law and did what we expect them to do. Secure any evidence by removing access to it. They are even giving the hardware back. They waited wich they don't have to and give the hardware back after copying data wich they don't have to do. Frankly I think they went way beyond what they needed to do to minimize damage.

Quit frankly the original poster seems to be one of those people that want the police to disappear. That line about wich coorperate master they offended is clear bullshit. mircx and aniverse are hardly the powers that be.

In any society that doesn't chose to be an anarchy you have to give some powers to the police to investigate crimes. Search warrants are pretty common in all democracys and also work pretty much the same way. If you get one it sucks but so far noone has come up with a better alternative except to just allow criminals free reign.

They had good reasons to shut them down, indeed :

[skaya]

I can't get access to the article, but I guess that the story is about the shutdown of FooNet. FooNet isn't a "real" hosting solution ; it's a cheap shell provider for script kiddies who want to have their own ircd. They might also provide "serious" hosting services ; but as soon as one provides shell services for such a targetted audience, she knows that she will have to handle some specific problems - DDOS, flood, etc.

And according to what I know about the FooNet shutdown (if that's the same story), there was thousands of DDOS "drones" located at the datacenter, and the staff of the datacenter failed to shut them down. That sounds very dubious to me, but you might want to check this for another side of the story ...

Quoting :

"Perhaps the blackest of the black hat networks is finally gone, raided by the FBI. Foonet was home of spammers, packet kiddies, script kiddies, carders, and other illegal activities, as documented in the links below."

PS: if the shutdown mentionned isn't the FooNet one, ignore this post :-)

You know...

[Niet3sche]

It's not like I agree with this, if indeed things happened as the article state... but a quick google on FooNet (AKA / DBA CIT ) turns up some VERY interesting results.

I google'd quickly on a hunch, and sure enough I got some rather interesting hits.

I claim to know nothing about SPEWS and how they go about adding to the blacklists, but they apparently are no stranger to it.

Furthermore, it seems that this IS NOT the first run-in with the FBI that FooNet/CIT has had: from here, if you scroll down a bit, you'll see the following text: The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host # We regret to inform you that on Saturday February 14, 2004 at approximately 8:35 am EST, FOONET/CIT's data center in Columbus, Ohio temporarily ceased operations. And this was from Feb. 14 ...

Another incident was reported out here on 07/12/03 (search the page for "foonet") ... seems that 84898 spams swamped a box, and follow-up by FooNet sucked - e.g. they turned a blind eye.

There are far too many hits to return ... if you're interested in more, you can always head here. For now, I'll close with this: I do not agree with the methods used, if they were as described ... however, FooNet/CIT is no stranger to the FBI, and perhaps this is all rolled in to the Feb. 14th notice ... maybe the FBI actually gave them 10 days to comply... I'd really like to see how this ends.

Re:Assholes.

[teamhasnoi]

Nah, if this were 1984, the hosting company would gladly hand over the servers.

Not to mention you could've just used a box of floppies to copy the hard drives.

Re:Threat?

[Chundra]

Abdul, Mohammed, Mustafa Ali, greetings! The goat is roasted. I repeat, the goat is roasted. Run! Run like the great camel to tell Uncle.

They had a warrant

[kill-9-0]

It seems that many people didn't read the text. The FBI had a warrant, which means they had to go before a judge, justify the need, and spell out what would be looked for/taken. If it wasn't initially spelled out that the servers would be taken, they might have had the warrant amended as such. Before some of you "conspiracy theorists" start screaming about a police state and such, the FBI was acting in the bounds of the law, under a warrant issued by a judge. John Ashcroft and George Bush had nothing to do with this. Maybe once you stop looking for black helicopters, you can see this. As for those of you saying you're glad you don't live in the US, we are the most free, most law-abiding country in the world. While we may not be perfect, we're the best thing going. Sorry if I'm offending anyone, but I'm tired of hearing knee-jerk reactions to things, without anyone reading the facts. Believe it or not, not EVERYTHING the government does is wrong.

Re:They had a warrant

[Hittite Creosote]

we are the most free, most law-abiding country in the world.

No, you're not. Finland is.

Re:They had a warrant

[Peyna]

Uhm, yeah, the US has some of the highest crime rates in the world pal.

Re:They had a warrant

[demigod]

As for those of you saying you're glad you don't live in the US, we are the most free, most law-abiding country in the world.

Any documentation to support these statements?

Most free? US is ranked 31st

• in freedom by the world press
• in freedom here

Most law-abiding? US is ranked

• 40th in per capita murders,
• 15th in embezzlements (per capita),
• 57th in rapes (per capita),
• 53rd in total crimes (per capita)
• 61st in Prisoners (per capita)

No you just aren't thinking

[SmallFurryCreature]

The company itself wasn't involved in the crime just their machines. Wich means someone from OUTSIDE has access to them. Leaving the machines in place as you wade throught the evidence leaves it wide open for the outsider to erase evidence. Worse what if one of those helpfull techs has other motives?

You are a cop and arrive at a murder scene with a dozen doctors standing around the corpse. Would you really allow any of these medical experts to assist you with determining the cause of death?

A shutdown machine cannot erase data and the fbi got the tools to simply copy data from HD's without the computer it was in being involved. This prevents any chance of the data being destroyed.

Saying they replug them back in at the fbi shows you have no idea of what is involved in this kind of investigation. They copy the HD's directly and completly by taking them out and putting them in their own hardware.

How the fbi does this kinda stuff has been discussed often enough on /.

This is nothing else then the police sealing of a crime scene. Any inconvenience is considered though luck. It really is no different from streets being closed off to allow marathons or demonstrations or repairs. Yes they do attempt to minimize damage but the investigation comes first.

But lets turn it around. If the FBI raids a place like enron would you find it acceptable if the bosses were allowed to keep making phone calls and keep working on their pc's and play with their shredders as they could loose money if the police removed access and took everything away?

Of course not. Just because this is a small hosting company doesn't change the law.

Re:They had good reasons to shut them down, indeed

[CommanderTaco]

No, it turns out you are right, cit & foonet are one and the same. http://www.easynetworknyc.com/foonet/

Other reports

[AndroidCat]

Not exactly news outlets, theWHIR had a short bit on the 16th, and it was mentioned in a thread in nanae on the 15th.

I do wonder how cooperative CIT was. After several hours of requests for the info (with a warrent) the FBI must have been riled to say "F-this-S, haul it away!". Think about how much extra work that must have been. There's more to this story, pity no news service has looked into it yet.

Re:Other reports

[LinuxInDallas]

Well, it makes for a better story to say that the poor web hosting company was raided by the FBI and stripped of all their equipment for no reason other than they couldn't react fast enough.

It's like when you see those videos of supposed poilce beatings where they only show the part where the cop is whacking the guy with his night stick. Nevermind the ass whooping that the suspect tried to give the cop 30 seconds prior. That seems to matter none. Just go for the most sensational story possible.

Re:Other reports

[ikeleib]

It's like when you see those videos of supposed poilce beatings where they only show the part where the cop is whacking the guy with his night stick. Nevermind the ass whooping that the suspect tried to give the cop 30 seconds prior. That seems to matter none.

Resisting arrest and assualting an officer are crimes. These crimes are to be tried by jury and if the defendant is found guilty, punished. The trial and punishment is not to be to sumarily given by police. The police are entitled to use force in their efforts to subdue a suspect or protect themselves and other from a suspect. They are not entitled to beat a suspect as retribution.

Kinda

[SmallFurryCreature]

Seems they are investigating the attacks against mircx and aniverse. Since mircx is now down and aniverse is barely holding on I think you might claim that they are looking for someone with mass destruction capability.

the guy behind it seems to have been boosting about about a 200k botnet. 200.000 machines under his control. I think this is no longer some harmless hacking. This is stuff the fbi needs to investigate cause quit frankly nobody else seems able to stop this.

So unless you believe the net should be total anarachy ruled by those with the most bots then this kinda off stuff is sadly needed. To bad for those caught in the crossfire but that is live. Nothing really different from when all trains are disrupted because someone jumped in front of one. A marathon closing off all the streets despite the fact you hate sports. A demonstration causing massive gridlock despite the fact that only 200 people in a million people city are taking part.

Live sucks at times. Really this story shows that /. is getting more and more tabloid. A serious tech site would have asked what the fbi was investigating and wether the hosting company was hosting the person investigated or had servers wich were hacked or was simply a place where the hacker might have left evidence.

Re:Kinda

[metamatic]

Yeah, it's about time the FBI got involved in cleaning up the DDoS problem. Looks like there was at least plenty of circumstantial evidence that FooNet was harboring DDoS vandals and credit card scammers, so I don't have a problem with their suffering a few days of downtime while the situation is investigated. We're talking about people who destroy businesses and volunteer-run networks and rip off innocent bystanders to the tune of thousands of dollars each. I, for one, would like to see a few of them sent to prison.

Re:Move a complete data-center???

[DA-MAN]

I don't buy it! How can they move that stuff, not only physically, but also logically? To re-plug the servers, they need:

Or they can clone all the drives with ghost (now with ext3 support) and use Ghost Explorer in Windows to find specific files and folders without ever booting the machines into Linux and dealing with bullshit. (also dd/mount -o loop)

I prefer to read (between the lines) that they wanted something to be stopped, and eventually an occasion to get the information on the long term (weeks at least) on who/where it is

I believe one of two things:
1) They possibly thought whatever was going on might have been contributed to by someone on the inside and didn't want to give time for people to erase evidence. Maybe a raving lunatic anonymous coward but link.
2) They got impatient and thought they could do it faster, which probably ended up not being the case.

The strange part, for a European citizen like me, is that no reason at all is given. Normally (in democratic/free world), an investigation means a judge, some reasons, some rule brake, some arguments on why the police is acting.

A warrant means that a Judge signed off on the investigation. They were able to convince a Judge that they had probable cause, how is this different from Europe? (I'm not trolling, I just don't know much about the legal system in European Countries and realize that it probably differs from Euro Country to Euro Country)

I hope that with these new laws in Europe we are not going to become like that too soon ;-).

I agree, big brother is getting scary here in the states.

Re:Seizing an entire data center

[bruns]

Let me fill you in on Foonet.

Foonet was the blackest of the black hat networks in existance. They hosted spammers, carders (credit card theives), DDoS drones, floodnets, and various other illegal activities and blindly turned the opposite way and let it happen.

Foonet was based out of the basement of the owners' house. There was no actual 'data center'. They had a T3 and a few T1s - nowhere near the OC-X level they were claiming.

They got tossed off of GBLX about a week before they were raided, and were humping the light at Qwest right before they got pulled.

I knew about this right after it happened.

Foonet will not be coming back, so get over it kiddies. Your DDoS drones are gone. Spammers, your mail servers are gone. Go run and hide under another rock.

A little hint for all of you who can't figure it out - the FBI doesn't usually seize all equipment if its something small. If they took all of the equipment, there is a good reason why they did (not that foonet was acting 'too slow').

I have a list of stuff about foonet on the AHBL page here.

Re:and....Absentee landlords.

[The Unabageler]

I 100% agree. I get in political discussion with folks who complain about the system not working...when I ask if they write their representatives they say no. I ask if they vote, they say they aren't registered. How dare someone say the system is broken when they've never bothered to participate!! Register to vote if you haven't already and GET OUT AND BE HEARD. Vote on election days, write your senators and representative whenever you have something for the government to hear. A government of the people means we are their bosses! They don't listen to the majority, they lose their job. And don't say to me "the /. geeks will never be the majority" until you all are registered to vote and participate in our government! It's more important for us to do it now more than ever...

Redundant, maybe...

[syberanarchy]

...but it bears repeating -

One more reason to get hosting based outside the US, if your site does anything but blindly wave the flag and speak the newspeak.

Re:and....Absentee landlords.

[The AtomicPunk]

It won't help. People won't vote third party, they only vote for the current reigning Demopublican party.

The democrats and republicans use rhetoric to convince the less intelligent that there's actually a difference between the two, assuring that almost everyone votes democrat to vote AGAINST the republican, or republican to vote AGAINST the democrat.

Unfortunately, there's no appreciable difference betwixt the two, so we're condemned to continue down the slippery slope.

Foonet/Creative Internet Technologies

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Columbus, and have had the misfortune of working with foonet/Creative Internet Technologies/Creative Internet Techniques - they have called themselves all three. The small ISP which I used for my website unexpectedly moved our web site to a server at foonet. All of our mail forwarding was getting blocked by about every blacklist on the planet, and the uptime was horrendous. Needless to say, despite the 3 month prepay, we immediatly moved to another ISP. While we were being hosted at foonet, located about 10 minutes from us, I called them (local, no 800 # - ) multiple times, telling them that they were on blacklists. I never could talk to anyone, just leave messages that would go unanswered. If you are doing anything remotely important, avoid foonet/CIT like the plague. Their phone numbers are/used to be Sales - 614 353 8243 and General Inquires - 740 881 0323

Electronic Evidence Gathering

[nologin]

Well, it is a pretty simple premise.

The FBI cart equipment away to their premises in order to duplicate the systems and environments. If ever you get into information systems forensics, they would at least perform 2 copies. One is kept as an exact duplicate (to keep for their investigation records) and at least another to actually run analysis against (since searching on an active system can change the data stored in it).

It also makes it easier to catalog what they are working with, and prevents any interference from the outside.

And the moral of the story is

[El]

Delete your logs. Delete them early, and delete them often. Searching through 24 hours worth of data is a lot easier then searching through 2 years worth...

There is more to the story

[jasonhamilton]

If you'd been watching IRC sites such as SearchIRC, and IRCJunkie, there has been discussions over this topic since the 15th.

The only problem is, no one really seems to know what is going on!

Speculation on cause has ranged from DDoS attacks to having to do with the Microsoft leaked source code.

Sounds like a good reason to mirror

[McFly777]

If you are a data center, this sounds like another good reason to have a mirror (RAID 0, or is it RAID 1). That way you can just unplug the mirror drive and give it to the FBI without disturbing the rest of your service.

Actually this makes the acronym RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Devices) have dual meaning... RAID is what you want when you are raided!

Irvingnet

[dr_dank]

Irvingnet, the home of the Fark IRC channel, was also affected in the raid. The MOTD said that the entire datacenter was cleaned out by the FBI.

USA politics = one party system?

[beaverfever]

I have believed for a long time that more Americans should be voting for the Green party. There are many who prefer the Green's stand but fear that a vote for Green is a vote wasted and would only serve to help put the Republicans in office. I suggest accepting the (relatively) short term pain of Republican rule and looking at the long term.

Currently the Democrats and Republicans are essentially different flavours of the same poison. Forget the next election, forget the next five elections. Even if the Democrats gain power they will produce more of the same crap. Vote Green in the next election - they won't get much this time around, but if everyone who wanted to vote Green did, then the Greens would probably make the coveted 5% mark, which means more money. With more money they could do better the next time around, and after two or three more elections they could mount a real challenge to the status quo (if they manage to not become a part of the status quo).

Forget tomorrow; tomorrow is already a disaster. Think of your children and think of your grandchildren.

As for the Green party itself, getting Nader elected (as implausible as it may be) would not be a great triumph as I can easily imagine the dems and repubs in the houses making his life hell. The Greens need to seriously focus on getting seats in the two houses. With balances teetering at 51-49 for a long long time, the Greens getting just a few seats and being able to tip a house one way or the other could provide a breath of fresh air that American politics has needed for a very long time. Why the US generally believes it can only function with a two-party political system (with little difference between the two) is baffling and perhaps a little sad.

Re:USA politics = one party system?

[TheXRayStyle]

One thing you may want to look into is supporing Instant Runoff Voting. You can get some information about it here. It has been shown to be successful in places such as Papua New Guinea with an error less than that of US Presidential elections (yeah, what a high standard of comparison...). It allows people to vote their mind without worrying about a slightly lesser evil not getting their vote and losing to a greater one.

Basically, it works like this: You rank the candidates in order and your first choice gets your first vote. All the votes are counted and the candidate with the least votes is eliminated. If the candidate eliminated is your first choice, then your vote goes to the second candidate on your list. This process continues until only one candidate is left, and they are then elected. (See the link above for a better explanation...)

If this sounds like something you'd like instituted, contact your senators and representatives!

Furthermore, support candidates such as Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich who have declared their support for IRV. As he says in his platform:

I also support "Instant Runoff Voting." IRV offers a cost-effective way of insuring that the winning candidate is preferred by a majority of voters; it encourages voters to vote their wishes and not their fears; it promotes greater voter turnout and positive campaigning.

I seriously believe that implimenting a system such as this is the best way to get out of the Kang "Go ahead, throw your vote away." mentality about 3rd party candidates that America seems to have. Hell, even I feel that way in this next election.

Peace.

Re:USA politics = one party system?

[ttsalo]

I seriously believe that implimenting a system such as this is the best way to get out of the Kang "Go ahead, throw your vote away." mentality about 3rd party candidates that America seems to have.

Maybe, but the power to turn the current two-party system into a multiparty-system rests in the hands of the two parties in power. Why on earth would they give any power away, ever? There's about as much chance of a two-party system going multiparty as a one-party system going two-party, i.e. none (barring revolution).

Re:USA politics = one party system?

[spitzak]

I have heard that instant runoff is mathmatically broken and somewhat of a scam. Supposedly it will allow votes for (as an example) Greens, until the point where Greens become powerful enough to actually make a difference. At that point a vote for a Green will suddenly be bad, just like it is under the current system. The main reason is (assumming you like Dems more than Republicans) is that at that point your Green vote will make your Dem vote as #2 really mean #2 and Dems will lose to Republicans who voted them #1.

There is good analysis at http:://www.votingmethods.org. This site is obviously Libertarian, but their analysis seems accurate and their arguments about how to make Libertarians get votes without Republicans losing apply just as well to how to make Greens get votes without Democrats losing.

Re:and....Absentee landlords.

[The Unabageler]

Voting for the lesser of two evils is better than not voting at all. If you're about to be killed, and the murderer says "should I use this shotgun and blow your head off, or stick you with tiny needles until you bleed to death?" would you make a choice or let him choose? Not to say that our government elections are akin to murder per se (though some might interpret them as such).

Government participation is important after the election too, there are many websites that make it easy to send letters to your elected officials to tell them your opinion. That way you can make a difference every day for their elected term, instead of just once every few years. Don't say I'm full of shit if you don't try.

Facts

[FriendofFoonet]

1.) Foonet/CIT did cooperate. 2.) Warrant was sealed. 3.) Not many, if any, got "free" accounts there. 4.) 300 or so servers were taken. 5.) Agent responsible to contact hasn't been returning calls/emails. 6.) Only a couple of machines have been returned, some should be sent out today. 7.) Warrant was served on a house which contained foonet/cit, Paul, his very pregnant wife, and two small children. 8.) Paul has always cooperated with the FBI. 9.) A 200K botnet would have clogged the lines Foonet/CIT was on, get real for pitys sake, 200K? lol 10.) Those crying DDos kiddies being freely housed are mostly terminated customers. 11.) The ownership of Foonet/CIT had recently changed, some guy named Jay owns it now. 12.) Nobody directly working for/owning Foonet/CIT knows why this raid was done, why do kiddies claim they do? I'm going to work now, feel free to flame. Sincerely, Kelly

Be more suspicious

[Karem Lore]

If I were the ISP in question I would look long and hard at what the FBI might have put onto the systems...Some backdoors, sniffers etc. I hardly see what taking the hardware to a lab can do over onsite data mining. I would bet my bottom dollar that there is something the FBI put on those machines...

I would recommend that the ISP gets all the user data (non-executable) off into storage, wipe clean, re-install everything, copy data back on...Problem is that the setup for this would be exhaustive and time-consuming. However, if there is an IRC informant tool that has been added to this (I remember slashdot articles concerning a system developed by FBI or CIA on a system to snoop) it would conflict with the ISP's promise of security and privacy...

An argument against The War on Terror

[0x0d0a]

The problem is the ratio of times that terrorists are *really* involved.

How many major terror acts are perpetrated or confounded each year relative to how much we've seen "The War on Terror" used to justify anything and everything anyone can get away with. Funding for every agency under the sun derives from whether they're combatting terror. The DOE needs money "to combat terror" by developing methods to protect our utility grid. The DoD needs funds to "help combat terrorism" by developing new monitoring and data-mining technologies. The CDC needs money to "help combat terror" by producing vaccines. I'll bet that even the Department of Agriculture has funding initiatives based on "terror" somewhere -- maybe they want to monitor use of crop dusters, who knows.

It's freaking ridiculous. The "War on Terror" certainly saves lives, but the amount of resources that have been claimed in its name *vastly* outweigh the amount of damage that terrorism has done to us. A lot more people lost their lives to car crashes in 2001 than to terrorist attacks. Did we have black helicopters ready to swoop down on speeders? How about long-range alcohol sensors? What about armed guards at strategically-placed toll booths that search cars and people thoroughly for any kind of alcohol? All these sorts of things have been done in the name of "The War on Terror", instead of being used in an area where more American lives are being lost. The "War on Terror" is, frankly, a tool based in fear to help manipulate the masses. It has little practical value.

I claim that terrorism on the order of at 200:1 life amplification (roughly what the 9/11 terrorists achived -- something like 4000 lives to around 20 terrorists) cannot be eliminated without massively curtailing and altering a free society. There are just too many ways for a person willing to die to kill many people.

I would like to point out that people are only willing to throw their lives away if they are incredibly upset over something you've done. You don't see Iceland coming under terror attacks, because Iceland doesn't anger people to the point of being willing to die to kill Icelanders (or whatever a citizen of Iceland is called).

We have spent masses of money and effort on trying to figure out how to crush terror rings, on making people so afraid to resist the United States that they won't dream of it. The problem is, it can't be done. The Soviets couldn't crush resistance with years of secret police and encouraging children to inform on their parents. I don't think Bush Junior can do so in our society. Sheer force and fear just don't work when you're dealing with people who are willing to lose their lives to kill. You have no cards that they are interested in.

How much money has been spent on diplomatic and social solutions to eliminating terrorism? Supposedly the United States has a negative image in Islamic countries -- how much work have we gone through to improve that image? How much effort has gone into determining the things that are making people so angry that they are willing to *die* to hurt citizens in the US and resolve those issues?

A lot of people feel that trying to resolve things peacefully would be "giving in to the terrorists", and encourage future terrorist acts. I don't agree. The only value to a hard-core refusal to ever attempt peaceful solutions is as an attempt to establish prescedent governing future acts -- that no terrorist would ever be willing to attack the United States if it was *guaranteed* that doing so would hurt his cause, and damn the consequences to us in hurting that cause. The problem is, the prescedent has clearly not been established during the time we have taken a hard-line approach. The United States was attacked several times, despite having followed tough guidelines for dealing with terrorism in the past.

I'm curious as to what would happen if the 70 billion or whatever dollars that are being spent to keep us in Iraq (which at least originally was supposed

Use RAID to protect against RAIDs

[ziegast]

I see all alot of, "their rights have been violated", and "this is why I don't host in the US", and "here's what I think they're investigating", but I don't see anything constructive about how to protect your service uptime against a raid.

At a local security meeting, I learned about security incident handling, and things you can do to help preserve the chain of custody of the evidence (aka data). It's one thing to copy data, but just by reading data on most filesystems, you alter it. If a hacker determines that you are investigating them, that can and will try as fast as they can to cover their tracks, and it's alot quicker to delete/destroy/taint data than copy data.

The fastest and best to preserve a single machine's data is to break a RAID 1 array (pull out live disks). Your machines keep running, and the FBI gets a pristine copy of the disks that they can put into (hopefully antistatic) evidence bags and document chain of custody without modification of the data. They can go read it at their leisure off-site. Using RAID5 doesn't cut it. Using single disks with frequent backups doesn't cut it. Use RAID1.

Another way to protect data and preserve service is to store all non-OS data on enterprise storage that supports advanced mirroring or snapshot capabilities. If I had a NetApp, I could create a read-only snapshot and give the FBI access to that point in time copy of data and never delete it until I can do a DR copy of my filer onto another box. If I have an EMC or Hitachi or other large RAID1-capable unit, I can beak off a very large mirror and present it to FBI hosts on a SAN and continue to run off of unprotected data or implement a disaster recovery plan to get me running again on another similar storage. This data isn't as clean as a "drive in a bag", but with proper notes and techniques, the FBI can be convincing enough to a jury that the data was used in the investigation was correctly read unmodified "beyond a reasonable doubt".

If I'm really good, and have a bigger budget, I'll have a near-real-time mirror of that data (NetApp SnapMirror, EMC SRDF, "rsync", etc.) in a remote location that runs independently of my primary site and a plan that will help keep me running while I let the FBI tears apart my primary data center.

If you run a 100% uptime service ("Show me the nines!"), it's your responsiblity to to have an effective disaster recover plan. An FBI or Secret Service raid is an equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing into your data center. You as an individual, have a RIGHT to privacy and due process, but your company has created obligations to your customers to which you've guaranteed service, and your customers care more about the latter than the former. It's more responsible to have a DR plan and sue the FBI to replace your hardware than not have a plan and sue for lost business.

-ez

If the checksum doesn't fit, you can't commit!

Ruby Ridge?

[Shadowin]

Clinton administration under that bastion of civil liberties (nevermind Waco, Ruby Ridge, or Elian Gonzalez)

I hate to get offtopic here, but it really annoys me when democrat bashers don't even know what they're talking about. I bet you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage religiously.

Hint, Ruby Ridge happened in '92.

This was foonet,, hardly a reputable company

[Anonymous Coward]

The company in question, known as "Foonet" or "Creative Internet Technologies" is well known to anyone who frequents efnet as a safe haven for anyone involved in illegal activities, including DDoS, childporn, compromising hosts, spamming, carding etc, the staff of foonet are well known for overlooking illegal activity by their customers..
Most likely the fbi turned up to confiscate one or two customers boxes and saw how stuffed with illegal data their network is, virtually everyone on efnet who is involved with illegal activity used to base their operation from foonet, the servers there will be a total goldmine of evidence for the fbi..
Infact, the staff themselves at foonet are well known for breaking the law, in particular "Paul" who owns the company gives shell accounts or free hosting to people who will ddos for him, and often the staff at foonet have used their customers credit cards for fraudulent transactions.

Their equipment is being returned right now

[SoopahMan]

From their site:

02/23/2004 CIT re-establishes service.

We have restored service at Equinix's Chicago Data Centers. ... The FBI has begun retuning equipment to CIT which is being shipped to our new facilities in Chicago. At this time CIT will continue to provide dedicated DDOS Protected web hosting only.

The rest of the page is chaff about who the company is, and things already quoted here.

This puts the downtime they experienced at about 2 weeks - which must have been very disruptive to their business, but not in line with most "the FBI is here" horror stories. Though I understand the FBI agents in this case not wanting to be any more disruptive than they have to be, it is incompetent of the FBI as an organization to not have a more unitrusive means of auditing large datahouses unannounced - although the companies they arrive at cannot possibly be prepared, the FBI must anticipate this frequent eventuality.

A bit of behind the scene information

[Senior Frac]

I know the Ashcroft-obsessed crowd will drown out this message, but I will say it anyway.

foo.net has, for the longest time, been protecting carders. They've been told so, repeatedly, by the anti-spam community and weaseled. My suspicion at this point is that either they are actively involved and/or some of their members are involved. FBI methods aside, foo.net isn't the innocent-victim they would have you believe.

This is not a bad thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has had multiple run-ins with Foonet and their customers over the years, I'm personally glad to see this happen, even if it's only temporary. The FBI doesn't just decide to dismantle an entire datacenter on a whim, there obviously has to be just cause. I feel that in this case, there's probably more than enough cause. If you are a (wannabe) "hacker" or "packet kiddie", Foonet is the place for you, and most people know it.

I run a large text based chat server (IRC), and as such we see frequent (D)DoS attacks. Far too many of these attacks in some way lead back to Foonet. It's even rumored that some of their employees harvest and sell Denial of Service drone networks... how's that for service! Since Foonet was raided a week and a half ago, we've seen maybe 25% of the DDoS attacks that we reguarly receive.

Bottom line... don't target "kiddies" as your primary customer base, and don't tolerate their abuse and things like this will not happen. But hey, what do I know.

We're not talking about a Database being taken...

[reverendG]

And most likely, the FBI didn't tell the hosting company exactly what it is they wanted. When the Feds come in with a search warrant, they don't ask for your help. They say, "stand aside" and commence ransacking.

It's just a job...

[The Queen]

The agent that siezed the equipment probably has a boss who expects to see progress, and that progress is probably propagated up the line to the point where the details have been filtered out and it's just a number on a spreadsheet of how many computer crimes have been procecuted in the last however many days. The ulterior motive is to look like he's being productive in order to keep his job.

Ah, there's the rub.

Behind every job is a human being. That job could be something as heroic and altruistic as a fireman, or something as shady and questionable as this FBI guy. What all the folks in the country need to realize is that all the things we bitch about are being done TO us, BY us. If people would refuse to fill jobs that had questionable consquences, things might be different. We will never know that, since we all have bills to pay, and somebody will always take those crappy jobs.

What I find fascinating is that so many of us have jobs where the harmful consequences are so far down the chain that we can't even see how we have contributed. But alas we are all a part of our own mess.

Unrelated, or disappointing?

[kenners]

While everyone seems to be focusing on the FBI and it's antics, hackers behind the scenes are running around making fools of intelligent men.

This weekend, we saw foonet disappear without a trace, mirc-x, aniverse, and rizen brought down in flames by DDoS attacks, and (ranked least important on this list) the anime fansubbing scene, as well as Paul (the one actually served with the warrant says #foonet on efnet) in complete disarray and confusion.

Maybe in a few weeks, some legitimate news corporation will repost what I'm about to suggest with more information.

foonet's ircd was probably a host for some sort of illegality, hence the FBI's raid.

The warrant may have been formed with the help of an IRCop on mirc-x.

While sustaining DDoS attacks, a user visited mirc-x appearing to "be the culprit," and left a few locations he could be found.

Reading between lines, the lingo announced the reason for the attack: That damn IRCop reported my irc server with a lot of hacked computers taken away. So I'm bringing down his network.

What was the reason the IRCop reported anything? Did he crack a joke about the hacker's mother? Or was he just doing the "right thing?"

Sadly enough, by the end of the weekend, the anime scene had pretty much caused the death of 3 servers either due to load, or to followed DDoS attacks on other servers.

I have to wonder if there's actually a connection between the two events. 3 IRC networks down and an entire hosting company at a local FBI headquarters because of hacker squabbles? Are they really that important and/or worth the time?

I wish I knew. I wish someone could actually write about it. My story can't possibly be true.

Who to blame

[Sloppy]

Instead of blaming the FBI, here's an idea: maybe judges should be more responsible. Remember, a person with the legal authority to do so, signed a warrant that empowered the FBI to sieze some equipment that would disrupt many people's lives and businesses. Once that paper was signed, the FBI was just a machine.

I would like to ask this person: was it worth it? Is the evidence that this will result in, going to have value that exceeds the harm? Did you even ask yourself that question, before you signed the warrant?

I guess you can blame the FBI too, for bringing that unsigned warrant to some judge to be signed. But the responsibility ultimately fell on the judge.

Who judges the judges?

Steve Jackson Games vs Secret Service

[Anonymous Coward]

See the comments here. The a search warrant can kill your business. With a datacenter, a a warrant can allow an eager agent to pull up everything and load into trucks for analysis. You have no way stop this. If you're very very cooperative you may be allowed a copy of your data, at the conveniece of the government.

A data center adds this risk, which needs to be considered in a disaster recovery plan. Do you have off site backups at your hosted site? If the hosting site has the tapes, they may included when the warrant is executed. Your equipment may be swept up in a search of the datacenter, your first notice may be the watchdog scripts

Exactly

[macdaddy]

Second part untrue. What makes you think the Agents gives a flying fsck through a rolling doughnut about collateral damage to some business he's never heard of and isn't paid to protect?

Right on target. In my experience the FBI couldn't give a rats ass about causing the least amount of colateral damage or returning your siezed property. In 2001 (I believe that's right) the FBI siezed a Sun 20 from a lab at a University I worked for. The lab was less than maintained. It was full of SGIs that were vulnerable to every possible exploit for the last 5 or 6 years. It was a joke really. The Sun was also unmaintained. I pointed out to my super 10 months before the siezure that the Sun was an open relay and had services running that shouldn't be (I still have that email!). Nevertheless it wasn't touched for 10 months. Right about the time I volunteered to help the lab maintainer get everything up to date and secure again the FBI came in and siezed the Sun. It apparently was used for something bad. I haven't been with that University for a while now but last I knew it still hadn't been returned. The FBI couldn't give a rat's ass about causing the least amount of colateral damage. Their actions speak for themselves. What if the machine used for the attack (or probe for that matter) was the Unv's mail server? It was poorly maintained too and had been hacked before. What if an attacker used it as a launching pad for an attack. Would the FBI sieze that piece of state property, effecting bringing email on campus to a complete halt? It's sad really to think about it.

Is the actual court order available?

[Animats]

Has anyone obtained a copy of the court order?

Unless the hosting service itself is involved in criminal acts, it is unlawful for the FBI to request a search or seizure of "work product materials possessed by a person reasonably believed to have a purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper, book, broadcast, or other similar form of public communication, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce". This includes hosting services; that was established in the Steve Jackson Games case. The service itself, not its users, has to be engaged in criminal activities before search and seizure can take place.

The FBI is usually quite careful about this, having been publicly embarassed in the Steve Jackson Games case. So the question is whether there are criminal charges against the hosting service.

Re:Other systems *are* possible

[DF5JT]

"Besides the option of a large poster, it seems to me it would be possible to have a system where the police can search for evidence with a warrant, but have to pay for any damages they cause if the victims turn out to be innocent."

It should be the other way round: Unless there is danger of life or other physical harm involved, any investigation should set its priority in such a way that no one should feel hassled by the investigation. It feels strange to see that no one seems to question the means necessary to conduct an investigation.

Was it necessary to do the raid on a Saturday? Was there an imminent threat that had to be averted now and then? Monday would have been to late?

Investigators in the US seem to have completely disconnected from the actual proportions of crimes. A suspected center of DDoS attacks does not warrant the same level of agency involvement as a murder case.

Apply the Second Amendment

[tintruder]

This is one of those times where the government violates all constitutional protections to the point that citizens so violated damn near have a DUTY to exercise their second amendment rights. There is no excuse for the government putting a company out of business if their only requirement is to copy data. And if the FBI is unable to do so on-site in an orderly manner, it is their failure not the fault of the ISP. ISPs have long been given the protection of a "Common Carrier" just like the telcos. They are not responsible for monitoring the content of user conversations any more than ATT/MCI/Sprint are to monitor personal phone calls. Can you imagine the FBI shutting down AT&T and confiscating their equipment because a couple hackers were discussing DDoSing? It really is getting to the point that US citizens need to start pushing back against an overbearing government. Quite frankly, take away cable TV and consumer goods and little separates the USA of today and the Soviet Union of the 1960s and 70s as far as freedom and liberty go.

There's an easy solution to this problem!

[Bob Davis, Retired]

Steel doors, three feet thick slam closed sealing off the datacenter. Have all the computers in a vault. Single entry door (now covered by three feet of steel), and sets of quintuple, automatically locking one-way exit doors for the techs in the vault. When the FBI comes, push the Red Button. The vault main doors close, and the techs descend fire poles, with foot thick steel apertures closing off the vertical entrances. Then they file out of the escape doors, into the basement of the administrative facility. When the all clear is sounded (via radio-frequency tags embedded in employee ID tags) and everyone is out of the vault, epoxy resin is force-injected into the space between the quintuple evacuation doors.

Anyway, these places usually have gobs of venture capital. What the FUCK are they spending it on, pool tables and nerf guns?