A cybercrime data center that was shut down by German authorities was housed inside a former NATO bunker in a sleepy riverside town, police revealed on Friday.
More than 600 law enforcement personnel including Germany’s elite federal police unit, the GSG 9, were involved in an anti-cybercrime operation that took place in the town of Traben-Trarbach on the banks of the Mosel river.
Police officers succeeded in penetrating the building, a 5,000 square meter former NATO bunker with iron doors that goes five floors deep underground. The building was located on a 1.3-hectare (3.2 acre) property secured with a fence and surveillance cameras.
“We had to overcome not only real, or analog, protections; we also cracked the digital protections of the data center,” said regional police chief Johannes Kunz.
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The target of the operation was a so-called “bulletproof hosting” service provider. Bulletproof hosters provide IT infrastructure that protects online criminal activity from government intervention.
In the raid, police seized 200 servers along with documents, cell phones, and large quantities of cash. Thursday’s operation was the first time German investigators were able to apprehend a bulletproof hoster, according to German media outlets.
Cracking the security codes to access the contents of the servers was another difficult task for the police. On the servers, they found countless websites facilitating the illegal sale of drugs, weapons, counterfeit documents, and stolen data as well as sites distributing child pornography. The servers hosted Wall Street Market, formerly the second largest darknet market place for drugs in the word before law enforcement shut the platform down earlier this year.
The police arrested 13 people between the ages of 20 and 59 allegedly tied to the operation. Seven are held in custody. The ringleader is a 59-year-old Dutch man with ties to organized crime in the Netherlands. He established the server in Traben-Trarbach in 2013. While his official residency is listed in Singapore, he had been living in the bunker.
Source: Darknet cybercrime servers hosted in former NATO bunker in Germany | News | DW | 28.09.2019
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