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Would you not need an even larger legitimate datacenter to hide the operations of the illegal datacenter? I'm guessing the huge power draw from the grid and th

Would you not need an even larger legitimate datacenter to hide the operations of the illegal datacenter? I'm guessing the huge power draw from the grid and the redundant fiber trunks going to an old bunker will draw suspicions that somehow would need to be explained?

ryanlol 7y ago
Cyberbunker was always an odd one, they operated very openly. The existence of their bulletproof hosting business and it's curious location was never any secret.
- breakingcups 7y ago
  For a long time CB claimed to still be hosted in the Dutch bunker even though they vacated long ago.
rbanffy 7y ago
It can draw attention, but until the police has a reasonable excuse to look into the building, they can't.
wongarsu 7y ago
In principle all these bunkers are designed to be able to run on diesel generators, in some cases for 10+ years. I imagine the power requirements of a 1950s communications bunker and a modern datacenter are not too far apart. But in reality it probably doesn't matter, I doubt you can get a search warrant based on "they use a lot of power and have great internet connection"
- hollander 7y ago
  So how much diesel do you have to store for doing that 10 years? The only problem I see is that if you cut the cable, the data center has no value anymore. And that cable has to be connected somewhere to the normal grid.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    > So how much diesel do you have to store for doing that 10 years? A lot, but probably less than you think. To provide one kilowatt of power continusly for 10 years you need about 23 million liters of diesel, which fits in a cube with 28 meter long walls. A railway car of diesel can provide ~3W continously for 10 years. A tank the size of the Hindenburg could provide ~8kW for 10 years. The world's largest supertanker could carry enough diesel to provide ~22kW for 10 years.
    - jazzyjackson 7y ago
      Out of curiosity I googled "shelf life of diesel fuel" and found many sources suggesting 1 - 2 years is typical before it starts building up gums and settlement from reacting with oxygen -- but steps can be taken to last up to 10 years. Pretty interesting: https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp-country/en_au/media/fuel-news/long-term-storage-diesel.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp-country/en_au/media/fuel-n...
      - wongarsu 7y ago
        Strategic reserves and I assume these bunkers have tanks deep enough that geothermal heating causes convection currents, slowly stirring the contents. That seems to have a positive effect on shelf life as well.
    - tachyonbeam 7y ago
      But a datacenter with 200 servers might need on the order of 40KW, so that would be over 13,000 railway cars to last 10 years... Not very realistic. Now if you had a small nuclear reactor, on the other hand ;)
- toxican 7y ago
  You reminded me of this story I read a while back about how an indoor pot farm was identified because the heat from the grow lights melted the snow on the roof and apparently in the Netherlands that was enough to get a warrant - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/11402633/Dutch-police-catch-cannabis-growers-after-spotting-snow-free-roof.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherland... While looking for that story, I came across a wiki article about a similar story in the US, although the police there used thermal imaging to identify the farm from outside the home. That was ruled that constitutes a search w/o a warrant in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States I would suspect observing suspiciously melted roof snow in the US wouldn't violate the law like using thermal imaging would. I don't know German law, but I could see how that could get you a search warrant if Dutch and American law are any indication.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Thankfully modern indoor operations will be using efficient LEDs to avoid those roof issues when you can’t vent all the time.
    - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
      Very soon all you need will be genetically modified yeast. So brewing equipment could get you into trouble.
  - LyndsySimon 7y ago
    I’ve heard rumor of workers at my local electric company working as informers for the drug task force - they allegedly have reported residential users who have spikes of power usage that indicated that they might be being used as a grow operation.
mercora 7y ago
Why should it be a problem just saying you are running a datacenter at that place? If you are thinking about tax evasion or similar they probably had to deal with that anyhow. Also i am pretty sure running a datacenter even if it is home to some illegal activities is not illegal per se. As long as you do not actively assist in such activities or publicly announce support for such activities i think you are good.
dangerface 7y ago
They where very public about what they have been doing. The authorities knew they where hosting child porn it just took them 20 years to do something about it.

ryanlol 7y ago

Cyberbunker was always an odd one, they operated very openly. The existence of their bulletproof hosting business and it's curious location was never any secret.

breakingcups 7y ago
For a long time CB claimed to still be hosted in the Dutch bunker even though they vacated long ago.

rbanffy 7y ago

It can draw attention, but until the police has a reasonable excuse to look into the building, they can't.

wongarsu 7y ago

In principle all these bunkers are designed to be able to run on diesel generators, in some cases for 10+ years. I imagine the power requirements of a 1950s communications bunker and a modern datacenter are not too far apart. But in reality it probably doesn't matter, I doubt you can get a search warrant based on "they use a lot of power and have great internet connection"

hollander 7y ago
So how much diesel do you have to store for doing that 10 years? The only problem I see is that if you cut the cable, the data center has no value anymore. And that cable has to be connected somewhere to the normal grid.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  > So how much diesel do you have to store for doing that 10 years? A lot, but probably less than you think. To provide one kilowatt of power continusly for 10 years you need about 23 million liters of diesel, which fits in a cube with 28 meter long walls. A railway car of diesel can provide ~3W continously for 10 years. A tank the size of the Hindenburg could provide ~8kW for 10 years. The world's largest supertanker could carry enough diesel to provide ~22kW for 10 years.
  - jazzyjackson 7y ago
    Out of curiosity I googled "shelf life of diesel fuel" and found many sources suggesting 1 - 2 years is typical before it starts building up gums and settlement from reacting with oxygen -- but steps can be taken to last up to 10 years. Pretty interesting: https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp-country/en_au/media/fuel-news/long-term-storage-diesel.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp-country/en_au/media/fuel-n...
    - wongarsu 7y ago
      Strategic reserves and I assume these bunkers have tanks deep enough that geothermal heating causes convection currents, slowly stirring the contents. That seems to have a positive effect on shelf life as well.
  - tachyonbeam 7y ago
    But a datacenter with 200 servers might need on the order of 40KW, so that would be over 13,000 railway cars to last 10 years... Not very realistic. Now if you had a small nuclear reactor, on the other hand ;)
toxican 7y ago
You reminded me of this story I read a while back about how an indoor pot farm was identified because the heat from the grow lights melted the snow on the roof and apparently in the Netherlands that was enough to get a warrant - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/11402633/Dutch-police-catch-cannabis-growers-after-spotting-snow-free-roof.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherland... While looking for that story, I came across a wiki article about a similar story in the US, although the police there used thermal imaging to identify the farm from outside the home. That was ruled that constitutes a search w/o a warrant in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States I would suspect observing suspiciously melted roof snow in the US wouldn't violate the law like using thermal imaging would. I don't know German law, but I could see how that could get you a search warrant if Dutch and American law are any indication.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Thankfully modern indoor operations will be using efficient LEDs to avoid those roof issues when you can’t vent all the time.
  - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
    Very soon all you need will be genetically modified yeast. So brewing equipment could get you into trouble.
- LyndsySimon 7y ago
  I’ve heard rumor of workers at my local electric company working as informers for the drug task force - they allegedly have reported residential users who have spikes of power usage that indicated that they might be being used as a grow operation.

mercora 7y ago

Why should it be a problem just saying you are running a datacenter at that place? If you are thinking about tax evasion or similar they probably had to deal with that anyhow. Also i am pretty sure running a datacenter even if it is home to some illegal activities is not illegal per se. As long as you do not actively assist in such activities or publicly announce support for such activities i think you are good.

dangerface 7y ago

They where very public about what they have been doing. The authorities knew they where hosting child porn it just took them 20 years to do something about it.