7 ms·

Inside the Fortified, Nuke-Proof Bunker that's Now Hosting Wikileaks

100 points by FSecurePal 16y ago

die_sekte 16y ago
Utterly insane. Neat. Holy shit. I don't know what to think.
patrickgzill 16y ago
Is this a black eye for Amazon, or do they get a pass due to the pressure that we assume was applied to them as a company domiciled in the USA?
- ergo98 16y ago
  They get an easy pass. The idea of this ever going to Amazon in the first place just seems extraordinarily ill-conceived: There was no way it was going to stay up. Wikileaks is pursuing a remarkably old-school method of releasing these, with the whole centralized distribution point. They should release the entire set via P2P with collections symmetrically encrypted. They could then -- via the most rudimentary methods -- release individual keys at chosen intervals to still obtain the same throttled response. And one day when the feds are kicking in the doors, just drop the entire key collection.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    I wonder why they're not doing that.
    - sliverstorm 16y ago
      It's far less visible to normal, ordinary people, who they need to reach. The success of WikiLeaks depends in part on being highly visible and accessible by anyone and everyone- ironically, much the same as terrorism. (Not that I believe they are a terrorist organization, but they definitely function kind of like one, at least superficially) I imagine the day somebody figures out how to make a HTTP-compatible P2P network that allows you to browse web pages hosted on bittorrent will be the day WikiLeaks moves to P2P.
      - ars 16y ago
        > It's far less visible to normal, ordinary people, who they need to reach. There's no reason they can't do both.
        eneveu 16y ago
        I think there is more to it than a desire to space the releases to get better PR. They may want to verify the authenticity of the documents to avoid fake leaks. They may also want to edit some documents to remove data that would put individual persons at risk, like they did with Cablegate. Doing this takes time, and may not be short-circuited easily. They can't simply encrypt the files, release them using P2P, and then edit them / check them for authenticity. I guess it would be useful as an insurance, though.
    - ergo98 16y ago
      Even better, they should encrypt with a method that is reasonably, large-scale crackable around the window of their planned release. That would bring a lot of attention to cryptography (and the vulnerability of the same) as every media organization rents out massive AWS GPU clusters to try to crack it. That would be pretty entertaining. And if something happened to them...well it's going to be discovered anyways.
      - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
        > the vulnerability of [cryptography] Well, no. Competently done crypto is uncrackable for all practical purposes without side-channel attacks. Or, maybe, quantum computers (RSA; but why would you use RSA for this?)
        ergo98 16y ago
        Well, yes, of course. Competently done. Competently done crypotgraphy is rare, and most common cryptography is not competently done. Which is exactly the point of my post.
        JoachimSchipper 16y ago
        Most crypto implementations are vulnerable, yes, but the percentage of vulnerable deployed crypto implementations as a fraction of all deployed implementations looks much better. Note that I'm talking crypto: the OpenSSL people seem quite able to make all sorts of mistakes, but it's almost never the crypto itself that is at fault. (Today's news: a workaround for Netscape's stupidities apparently allows attackers to downgrade to a worse protocol suite in certain cases. Stupid bug, but not crypto per se.) So yes, there are errors, but publishing something AES-encrypted and giving away, say, half the key doesn't tell us anything about those.
        arethuza 16y ago
        Are there any forms of encryption which take a predictable and precisely defined amount of computing power to decrypt? e.g. Some asymmetric so that I could encrypt something easily but then require someone who wants to decrypt the message to perform 100 Trillion operations to decrypt it?
    - MikeCapone 16y ago
      I know we all assume that because something seems obvious that people must have though of it, but history has shown that it isn't the case. It could be simply that they haven't though of it. Maybe send them a email? As for the visibility of Wikileaks, I think that what matters is that journalists get the files. That's how most people hear of them. So it wouldn't really matter if they were released in a distributed P2P fashion, as long as the files are easy to find and recognize (f.ex. Wikileaks-01-01-2010-003.PGP or whatever).
    - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
      There was a insurance.zip floating around a while ago. I don't think they've released the keys yet...
    - crocowhile 16y ago
      They have actually released some big so-called "insurance" files via torrent in the past. They are AES256 encrypted. http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5728614/Wikileaks__insurance__file http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5728614/Wikileaks__insurance...
  - nochiel 16y ago
    "Wikileaks is pursuing a remarkably old-school method of releasing these, with the whole centralized distribution point." Please could you clarify what you mean. According to cablegate.wikileaks.org the distribution is being done via torrent (with an increasingly large number of seeds becoming available quickly). http://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/cablegate/cablegate-201012021301.7z.torrent http://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/cablegate/cablegate-201012...
- rdl 16y ago
  I'm curious if wikileaks picked Amazon knowing they'd be kicked off (either for political or technical reasons), just to increase their own media profile.
- tzs 16y ago
  Arguably some of the material on Wikileaks violates Amazon's acceptable use policy. For example, you can't use Amazon services to host things that are violations of privacy. It's also possible that some of the materials violate copyright, and so hosting it would violate Amazon's AUP. Works authored by government employees within the scope of their employment will be public domain so most of the material is probably OK, but is all of it? Finally, under the law on the books, I believe it is illegal to make much of the material available, and hosting illegal content violates the AUP. (And could get Amazon in trouble). It is possible that under the Supreme Court decision in the Pentagon Papers case that the First Amendment would override that. I say "possible" because it doesn't seem at all certain to me. That case was largely, I seem to recall, about prior restraint, and it was kind of a fuzzy decision. Amazon just wants to host stuff. If there is some serious question over whether it is legal or not, I don't think they want (or should be expected to want) to be the ones to deal with that fight--that's for whoever wants to actually publish the documents.
davidedicillo 16y ago
This is a 360 tour of the place http://www.bahnhof.se/panorama/ http://www.bahnhof.se/panorama/
- nkassis 16y ago
  I found the Tintin moon rocket in the conference room quite awesome ;p
gravaint 16y ago
Looks like a place that Jack Bauer would break into.
pigbucket 16y ago
"...one wonders why Swedish Bahnhof would take on the challenge of hosting a site that will probably be under permanent attack for the foreseeable future. Unless it's for the PR value" That's a good example of allowing one's imagination of possibilities to wander over very short distances. Is it that inconceivable that a company might be motivated by something other than the bottom line? Arvinjoar commented earlier on the principled character of the Bahnhof's founder: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959961 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959961
- potatolicious 16y ago
  Indeed. It's a little depressing that we live in a world where someone driven by principles instead of profits is regarded as extraordinary.
  - Dove 16y ago
    Such a sentiment says more about the speaker than the world.
  - grinich 16y ago
    I think it has to do with the author/editors. Most journalism today is driven by profits, not principles. Sites like this are practicing textbook yellow journalism, trying to grab eyeballs to save the sinking ship of newspapers. Principles and integrity are now so foreign an idea for them that it comes out in the writing. Julian Assange and Wikileaks are muckrakers, and that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Directly, the exposed governments and corporations. But indirectly, also the titans of "journalism" and news. Journalism is meant to push society, and right now Julian Assange is doing exactly that. WikiLeaks is like a new kid on the block, turning over rocks and standing up to bullies.
- baconhammer 16y ago
  In the reception area of that particular server hall, they have a small, wall-mounted box labeled "FRA collaboration point" (FRA being the Swedish equivalent of NSA, more or less). From that box, two cut cables are sticking out. :-)
bullseye 16y ago
As far as articles go, I'm not impressed with this one. Although I'd be willing to admit that my interest in all things Wikileaks is seriously waning. That said, there was little to no information about the actual data center, other than a link to a Forbes article about the first time Wikileaks moved there. They even embedded the same video from that original article. Throw in an offhand and speculative comment about Amazon bowing "to political pressure" and a few Flickr pictures and presto! I almost felt like I was reading another one of Shaun Gallagher's "I wrote this article with one mouse click" experiments.
- brazzy 16y ago
  Amazon bowing to political pressure is not speculative: "Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, was among the congressmen who pressured Amazon to stop hosting Wikileaks. He told AFP this morning that he plans to question Amazon about its relationship with Wikileaks." http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/12/wikileaks-kicked-out-of-amazons-cloud.ars http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/12/wikileaks-kicke...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
tlack 16y ago
Can anyone with more technical knowledge comment on this facility's connectivity to the internet, and how damage-resistant that is? If someone were to forcibly take Wikileaks offline, I would think internet connectivity would be the easiest attack vector, especially if they're located in a remote bunker which probably limits their options.
- joebananas 16y ago
  Remote? It's located in (under) Stockholm.
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  We're not quite at the level where anyone is going to risk war by throwing cruise missiles into a major metropolis just to shut down Wikileaks...
cosmicray 16y ago
Back in the late 1960s, and early 1970s, AT&T built a series of nuke resistant bunkers. The typical specs were concrete walls 36" thick, self contained turbine generators, water and air purification, plus rations to last up to 6 months. Some of those facilities are still around and operating (including one not far from me). I would expect that the switching gear of todays vintage takes up much less space and power than it did in 1971. Back then the interconnections were via long-distance coxial cable and microwave. Today there are fiber huts adjacent to the bunker. I wonder what AT&T uses all that extra floor space for now.
- pak 16y ago
  I don't think you were referring to these, but there are actually a few windowless, fortified concrete skyscrapers in New York that were built as telephone switching centers. Here's one in Lower Manhattan that is 29 stories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street They were likewise designed to withstand nuclear fallout. Because telephone switching equipment has shrunken over the years they now rent out some of the floor space as a hosted ultrasecure datacenter.
  - nkassis 16y ago
    That building looks like something right out of blade runner.
    - Devilboy 16y ago
      The article calls it 'extreme brutalism' http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=33+Thomas+Street,+manhattan&sll=-33.886413,151.118261&sspn=0.022836,0.016201&g=33+Thomas+Street&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=33+Thomas+St,+New+York,+10007,+United+States&ll=40.716799,-74.00565&spn=0.000966,0.001523&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=40.716799,-74.00565&panoid=kxOcRk6jH3sMR-4XaNyn1w&cbp=12,208.86,,0,-36.67 http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...
  - cosmicray 16y ago
    > I don't think you were referring to these, but there are actually a few windowless, fortified concrete skyscrapers in New York that were built as telephone switching centers. Actually no. The ones I'm referring to were (usually) built way out in rural areas, where they were away from the expected blast area of a hit on a major city. The one I'm aware of is built mostly underground, then backfilled so that it looks like a natural hill (a hill with a concrete top, and a big microwave tower). Some of these facilities were rumored to have ground entry points for a system called Combat Ciders ... http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/combat_ciders.htm http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/combat_ciders.htm
mkramlich 16y ago
Crypt anyone? Just finished Stephenson's masterpiece last week. I bet that's Randy in that last pic. ;)
rdl 16y ago
Bahnhof is pretty amazing. They have great interior design too, almost like a movie set (although I haven't visited in person yet). While for reasons of principle, hosting controversial content is great, and if it's legal in your jurisdiction, it is up to you if you want to do it, as a practical matter, a site getting >10Gbps DDoS while paying presumably close to nothing is going to potentially impair the usability of other sites in the datacenter. Even if you don't put profits above principle, you have a responsibility to your other customers to not fuck them over. A pure colocation (vs. managed or hosting) facility in a legal to host jurisdiction, near or at a carrier hotel where you can cheaply buy bandwidth from a bunch of different providers (on their core networks), and with great filtering agreements in place with the upstreams, is probably the only way to go. The colocation facility is just renting you space and power, and it's a much more arms length relationship; you can rapidly turn up network connections from other providers within the facility, vs. your own building somewhere (where running fiber often requires digging up the streets). Back in 2000 I did this with ~2Gbps of aggregate transit/peering to people inside London Telehouse, and 4xE1 + WiFi to the hosting location, with VPN over VSAT as a backup. You want to be able to put "problem" customers on their own subnets, potentially on their own routers and even transit connections, to isolate them from the rest of your customers. Combined with the regulatory constraints, Stockholm and Amsterdam are probably the best places to do this right now (or SFBA if it's a customer who will not be a legal problem in the US).
woadwarrior01 16y ago
More pictures of the Bahnhof datacenter, from the pingdom blog. http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/11/14/the-worlds-most-super-designed-data-center-fit-for-a-james-bond-villain/ http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/11/14/the-worlds-most-super-de...
chrislloyd 16y ago
I think now is an appropriate time to mention "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth": http://baens-universe.com/articles/when_sysadmins_ruled_the_earth http://baens-universe.com/articles/when_sysadmins_ruled_the_...
arethuza 16y ago
No bunker is really completely nuke-proof - even Cheyenne mountain had multiple SS-18s with single 25 megaton warheads targeted at it - it would not have survived. You might survive a near miss or fallout in a bunker - but in the age of precision delivered and/or high yield bombs nowhere is 100% safe.
- ANH 16y ago
  Yes, the author of the article must not have watched the video he linked to. The CEO of Bahnhof himself jocularly admits it wouldn't survive a direct hit.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

100 points by FSecurePal 16y ago

Utterly insane. Neat. Holy shit. I don't know what to think.

Is this a black eye for Amazon, or do they get a pass due to the pressure that we assume was applied to them as a company domiciled in the USA?

ergo98 16y ago
They get an easy pass. The idea of this ever going to Amazon in the first place just seems extraordinarily ill-conceived: There was no way it was going to stay up. Wikileaks is pursuing a remarkably old-school method of releasing these, with the whole centralized distribution point. They should release the entire set via P2P with collections symmetrically encrypted. They could then -- via the most rudimentary methods -- release individual keys at chosen intervals to still obtain the same throttled response. And one day when the feds are kicking in the doors, just drop the entire key collection.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  I wonder why they're not doing that.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    It's far less visible to normal, ordinary people, who they need to reach. The success of WikiLeaks depends in part on being highly visible and accessible by anyone and everyone- ironically, much the same as terrorism. (Not that I believe they are a terrorist organization, but they definitely function kind of like one, at least superficially) I imagine the day somebody figures out how to make a HTTP-compatible P2P network that allows you to browse web pages hosted on bittorrent will be the day WikiLeaks moves to P2P.
    - ars 16y ago
      > It's far less visible to normal, ordinary people, who they need to reach. There's no reason they can't do both.
      - eneveu 16y ago
        I think there is more to it than a desire to space the releases to get better PR. They may want to verify the authenticity of the documents to avoid fake leaks. They may also want to edit some documents to remove data that would put individual persons at risk, like they did with Cablegate. Doing this takes time, and may not be short-circuited easily. They can't simply encrypt the files, release them using P2P, and then edit them / check them for authenticity. I guess it would be useful as an insurance, though.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    Even better, they should encrypt with a method that is reasonably, large-scale crackable around the window of their planned release. That would bring a lot of attention to cryptography (and the vulnerability of the same) as every media organization rents out massive AWS GPU clusters to try to crack it. That would be pretty entertaining. And if something happened to them...well it's going to be discovered anyways.
    - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
      > the vulnerability of [cryptography] Well, no. Competently done crypto is uncrackable for all practical purposes without side-channel attacks. Or, maybe, quantum computers (RSA; but why would you use RSA for this?)
      - ergo98 16y ago
        Well, yes, of course. Competently done. Competently done crypotgraphy is rare, and most common cryptography is not competently done. Which is exactly the point of my post.
        JoachimSchipper 16y ago
        Most crypto implementations are vulnerable, yes, but the percentage of vulnerable deployed crypto implementations as a fraction of all deployed implementations looks much better. Note that I'm talking crypto: the OpenSSL people seem quite able to make all sorts of mistakes, but it's almost never the crypto itself that is at fault. (Today's news: a workaround for Netscape's stupidities apparently allows attackers to downgrade to a worse protocol suite in certain cases. Stupid bug, but not crypto per se.) So yes, there are errors, but publishing something AES-encrypted and giving away, say, half the key doesn't tell us anything about those.
      - arethuza 16y ago
        Are there any forms of encryption which take a predictable and precisely defined amount of computing power to decrypt? e.g. Some asymmetric so that I could encrypt something easily but then require someone who wants to decrypt the message to perform 100 Trillion operations to decrypt it?
  - MikeCapone 16y ago
    I know we all assume that because something seems obvious that people must have though of it, but history has shown that it isn't the case. It could be simply that they haven't though of it. Maybe send them a email? As for the visibility of Wikileaks, I think that what matters is that journalists get the files. That's how most people hear of them. So it wouldn't really matter if they were released in a distributed P2P fashion, as long as the files are easy to find and recognize (f.ex. Wikileaks-01-01-2010-003.PGP or whatever).
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    There was a insurance.zip floating around a while ago. I don't think they've released the keys yet...
  - crocowhile 16y ago
    They have actually released some big so-called "insurance" files via torrent in the past. They are AES256 encrypted. http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5728614/Wikileaks__insurance__file http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5728614/Wikileaks__insurance...
- nochiel 16y ago
  "Wikileaks is pursuing a remarkably old-school method of releasing these, with the whole centralized distribution point." Please could you clarify what you mean. According to cablegate.wikileaks.org the distribution is being done via torrent (with an increasingly large number of seeds becoming available quickly). http://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/cablegate/cablegate-201012021301.7z.torrent http://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/cablegate/cablegate-201012...
rdl 16y ago
I'm curious if wikileaks picked Amazon knowing they'd be kicked off (either for political or technical reasons), just to increase their own media profile.
tzs 16y ago
Arguably some of the material on Wikileaks violates Amazon's acceptable use policy. For example, you can't use Amazon services to host things that are violations of privacy. It's also possible that some of the materials violate copyright, and so hosting it would violate Amazon's AUP. Works authored by government employees within the scope of their employment will be public domain so most of the material is probably OK, but is all of it? Finally, under the law on the books, I believe it is illegal to make much of the material available, and hosting illegal content violates the AUP. (And could get Amazon in trouble). It is possible that under the Supreme Court decision in the Pentagon Papers case that the First Amendment would override that. I say "possible" because it doesn't seem at all certain to me. That case was largely, I seem to recall, about prior restraint, and it was kind of a fuzzy decision. Amazon just wants to host stuff. If there is some serious question over whether it is legal or not, I don't think they want (or should be expected to want) to be the ones to deal with that fight--that's for whoever wants to actually publish the documents.

davidedicillo 16y ago

This is a 360 tour of the place http://www.bahnhof.se/panorama/ http://www.bahnhof.se/panorama/

nkassis 16y ago
I found the Tintin moon rocket in the conference room quite awesome ;p

gravaint 16y ago

Looks like a place that Jack Bauer would break into.

pigbucket 16y ago

"...one wonders why Swedish Bahnhof would take on the challenge of hosting a site that will probably be under permanent attack for the foreseeable future. Unless it's for the PR value" That's a good example of allowing one's imagination of possibilities to wander over very short distances. Is it that inconceivable that a company might be motivated by something other than the bottom line? Arvinjoar commented earlier on the principled character of the Bahnhof's founder: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959961 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959961

potatolicious 16y ago
Indeed. It's a little depressing that we live in a world where someone driven by principles instead of profits is regarded as extraordinary.
- Dove 16y ago
  Such a sentiment says more about the speaker than the world.
- grinich 16y ago
  I think it has to do with the author/editors. Most journalism today is driven by profits, not principles. Sites like this are practicing textbook yellow journalism, trying to grab eyeballs to save the sinking ship of newspapers. Principles and integrity are now so foreign an idea for them that it comes out in the writing. Julian Assange and Wikileaks are muckrakers, and that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Directly, the exposed governments and corporations. But indirectly, also the titans of "journalism" and news. Journalism is meant to push society, and right now Julian Assange is doing exactly that. WikiLeaks is like a new kid on the block, turning over rocks and standing up to bullies.
baconhammer 16y ago
In the reception area of that particular server hall, they have a small, wall-mounted box labeled "FRA collaboration point" (FRA being the Swedish equivalent of NSA, more or less). From that box, two cut cables are sticking out. :-)

bullseye 16y ago

As far as articles go, I'm not impressed with this one. Although I'd be willing to admit that my interest in all things Wikileaks is seriously waning. That said, there was little to no information about the actual data center, other than a link to a Forbes article about the first time Wikileaks moved there. They even embedded the same video from that original article. Throw in an offhand and speculative comment about Amazon bowing "to political pressure" and a few Flickr pictures and presto! I almost felt like I was reading another one of Shaun Gallagher's "I wrote this article with one mouse click" experiments.

brazzy 16y ago
Amazon bowing to political pressure is not speculative: "Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, was among the congressmen who pressured Amazon to stop hosting Wikileaks. He told AFP this morning that he plans to question Amazon about its relationship with Wikileaks." http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/12/wikileaks-kicked-out-of-amazons-cloud.ars http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/12/wikileaks-kicke...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

tlack 16y ago

Can anyone with more technical knowledge comment on this facility's connectivity to the internet, and how damage-resistant that is? If someone were to forcibly take Wikileaks offline, I would think internet connectivity would be the easiest attack vector, especially if they're located in a remote bunker which probably limits their options.

joebananas 16y ago
Remote? It's located in (under) Stockholm.
JoachimSchipper 16y ago
We're not quite at the level where anyone is going to risk war by throwing cruise missiles into a major metropolis just to shut down Wikileaks...

cosmicray 16y ago

Back in the late 1960s, and early 1970s, AT&T built a series of nuke resistant bunkers. The typical specs were concrete walls 36" thick, self contained turbine generators, water and air purification, plus rations to last up to 6 months. Some of those facilities are still around and operating (including one not far from me). I would expect that the switching gear of todays vintage takes up much less space and power than it did in 1971. Back then the interconnections were via long-distance coxial cable and microwave. Today there are fiber huts adjacent to the bunker. I wonder what AT&T uses all that extra floor space for now.

pak 16y ago
I don't think you were referring to these, but there are actually a few windowless, fortified concrete skyscrapers in New York that were built as telephone switching centers. Here's one in Lower Manhattan that is 29 stories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street They were likewise designed to withstand nuclear fallout. Because telephone switching equipment has shrunken over the years they now rent out some of the floor space as a hosted ultrasecure datacenter.
- nkassis 16y ago
  That building looks like something right out of blade runner.
  - Devilboy 16y ago
    The article calls it 'extreme brutalism' http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=33+Thomas+Street,+manhattan&sll=-33.886413,151.118261&sspn=0.022836,0.016201&g=33+Thomas+Street&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=33+Thomas+St,+New+York,+10007,+United+States&ll=40.716799,-74.00565&spn=0.000966,0.001523&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=40.716799,-74.00565&panoid=kxOcRk6jH3sMR-4XaNyn1w&cbp=12,208.86,,0,-36.67 http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...
- cosmicray 16y ago
  > I don't think you were referring to these, but there are actually a few windowless, fortified concrete skyscrapers in New York that were built as telephone switching centers. Actually no. The ones I'm referring to were (usually) built way out in rural areas, where they were away from the expected blast area of a hit on a major city. The one I'm aware of is built mostly underground, then backfilled so that it looks like a natural hill (a hill with a concrete top, and a big microwave tower). Some of these facilities were rumored to have ground entry points for a system called Combat Ciders ... http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/combat_ciders.htm http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/combat_ciders.htm

mkramlich 16y ago

Crypt anyone? Just finished Stephenson's masterpiece last week. I bet that's Randy in that last pic. ;)

rdl 16y ago

Bahnhof is pretty amazing. They have great interior design too, almost like a movie set (although I haven't visited in person yet). While for reasons of principle, hosting controversial content is great, and if it's legal in your jurisdiction, it is up to you if you want to do it, as a practical matter, a site getting >10Gbps DDoS while paying presumably close to nothing is going to potentially impair the usability of other sites in the datacenter. Even if you don't put profits above principle, you have a responsibility to your other customers to not fuck them over. A pure colocation (vs. managed or hosting) facility in a legal to host jurisdiction, near or at a carrier hotel where you can cheaply buy bandwidth from a bunch of different providers (on their core networks), and with great filtering agreements in place with the upstreams, is probably the only way to go. The colocation facility is just renting you space and power, and it's a much more arms length relationship; you can rapidly turn up network connections from other providers within the facility, vs. your own building somewhere (where running fiber often requires digging up the streets). Back in 2000 I did this with ~2Gbps of aggregate transit/peering to people inside London Telehouse, and 4xE1 + WiFi to the hosting location, with VPN over VSAT as a backup. You want to be able to put "problem" customers on their own subnets, potentially on their own routers and even transit connections, to isolate them from the rest of your customers. Combined with the regulatory constraints, Stockholm and Amsterdam are probably the best places to do this right now (or SFBA if it's a customer who will not be a legal problem in the US).

woadwarrior01 16y ago

More pictures of the Bahnhof datacenter, from the pingdom blog. http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/11/14/the-worlds-most-super-designed-data-center-fit-for-a-james-bond-villain/ http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/11/14/the-worlds-most-super-de...

chrislloyd 16y ago

I think now is an appropriate time to mention "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth": http://baens-universe.com/articles/when_sysadmins_ruled_the_earth http://baens-universe.com/articles/when_sysadmins_ruled_the_...

arethuza 16y ago

No bunker is really completely nuke-proof - even Cheyenne mountain had multiple SS-18s with single 25 megaton warheads targeted at it - it would not have survived. You might survive a near miss or fallout in a bunker - but in the age of precision delivered and/or high yield bombs nowhere is 100% safe.

ANH 16y ago
Yes, the author of the article must not have watched the video he linked to. The CEO of Bahnhof himself jocularly admits it wouldn't survive a direct hit.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]