The FBI took -- and mysteriously returned -- their server

http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/11/11647813-the-fbi-took-and-mysteriously-returned-their-server-heres-their-story#.T6zg38SqLMQ.twitter

by wglb • 14 years ago

75 49 14 years ago

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ahi3• 14 years ago

A smaller issue in this story but still important; what kind of data center gets a search warrant and server pulled, and doesn't immediately notify their client? Are they legally prohibited from doing so? Then they let the FBI put the possibly compromised server back on the network? WTF?

Karunamon• 14 years ago

Seems to be SOP from all of the data center horror stories that I've heard.. site/apps go offline, datacenter or domain registrar gives you no useful information of any kind, truth later found out via third party or lawyer work.

maratd2• 14 years ago

> Are they legally prohibited from doing so?

Yes. They can be charged with obstruction of justice or interfering with an investigation.

danssig• 14 years ago

Seems like a proper time for civil disobedience.

ahi3• 14 years ago

Still doesn't make much sense. The client is going to figure it out. Also, a search warrant doesn't give the Feds the ability to put it back. Maybe with a national security letter for the purpose of putting spyware on it? But even then the server owner is going to notice that their server went missing for a couple days. "Must have gone for a long walk. Glad it's back," is not how I would approach it.

e40• 14 years ago

I depends on the type of warrant, but there are warrants that require silence under threat of prosecution.

lincolnwebs• 14 years ago

If that were my server, I'd pull the data needed and burn the hardware. Never use it again.

Nrsolis2• 14 years ago

NFW.

I'd build a new machine from scratch, at a different datacenter, using pristine code and data from backups.

Once a machine has been in an adversary's possession, not even the data is safe.

That said, the FBI probably just imaged the drives. They're not as clueful/devious as many think they are.

alecco• 14 years ago

They do hire clueful contractors once in a while.

koeselitz• 14 years ago

>> "That said, the FBI probably just imaged the drives. They're not as clueful/devious as many think they are."

I would agree, but it also doesn't seem like some kind of act of charity that they plugged the thing in and tried to reconnect it and made sure it was apparently working before they left.

jonknee• 14 years ago

At least keep it around in a closet somewhere--at some point in the future it might be fun to play with whatever nasties are on it.

BCM43• 14 years ago

They are doing something like that, but auditing the machine first to see if they can get any information on why the FBI returned it so quickly.

derrida• 14 years ago

"I'd pull the data needed": what if there is a virus?

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

How do you put a virus in a SQL dump?

RyanMBoland3• 14 years ago

I'm a student at the University of Pittsburgh. From that point of view, this seems like a perfectly fine action to take. The FBI agents may have disrupted service to a few hundred users, but these threats were affecting thousands of people.

I don't know if these anonymous email threats were unprecedented or not, but they certainly present a huge challenge to law enforcement. What would have happened if the people responsible didn't just stop?

Of course, you could subscribe to the view of the conspiracy theorists among us who feel that the FBI did actually catch the people responsible and are now employing them. :P

BryanB555• 14 years ago

I pretty much agree, they talked about "innocent peoples privacy" but if they are truly innocent then it shouldn't matter if the FBI sees their information. If my data were on that server and I was doing nothing wrong I really don't think I would mind handing it over to the FBI to help find even the smallest threat to our country.

RyanMBoland3• 14 years ago

But, was anyone's personal data really on that server? If it's an anonymous emailing service I would think that just the service was disrupted.

sopooneo• 14 years ago

Right to privacy is fundamental in the United States. People should never have to respond to the argument that if they are truly innocent they won't mind some breach.

CWuestefeld2• 14 years ago

Up-vote because many people feel this way, so it's important to discuss. But I strongly disagree.

From that point of view, this seems like a perfectly fine action to take.

There's certainly an argument to be made in support of your statement. If we were to work in a purely utilitarian manner, there would be little room for argument.

But the design of the structure of civil rights we have in America doesn't work that way. We recognize that people have certain inherent, inalienable right. Even if stripping someone's rights would save tremendous tragedy, our philosophical underpinnings prevent it.

We don't condone torture (unless you're the current President or his predecessor), even when we might be able to extract information that could save many.

We could save many thousand people who are sick, and destined to die, waiting in vain for organ transplants. Just pick somebody's name out of a hat, and divide up his organs -- a liver, a heart, a couple of kidneys. For each life we took, we could save four or more others (not to mention improving others with cornea transplants, etc.). But despite the fact that utilitarian balance says that the net benefit to society would be positive, our system will not even contemplate such an action.

Those examples are extreme, but they illustrate the point that we don't take actions that injure innocent people (and remember, everyone is innocent until proven guilty) even when they can save many others.

RyanMBoland3• 14 years ago

I think that you've taken this too far. We can't make blanket statements about peoples rights and expect them to be applicable in every situation.

In this case, a legal authority made the decision to interrupt a service for a small period of time in order to investigate a terrorist act that was disrupting the lives of thousands of people daily. If this was, say, a service that was providing medical assistance to elderly people, I don't think the same decision would have been made.

biancabronx• 14 years ago

Scary stuff. The state of privacy in society today is nothing short of scary.

patrickgzill3• 14 years ago

Here is my question...

If you rent an apartment, even though you don't own the building, you have "rights of tenant in possession". Basically the apartment is "yours" and you have rights. If a search warrant is to be served to search your place, it gets served on YOU, not the owner of the buildng.

If you rent server space, like a rack in a datacenter, that space is "yours". So should the search warrant have been honored?

corin_5• 14 years ago

Generally speaking you aren't renting server space, you're renting server equipment i.e. the rack, hardware, power, networking, so I would imagine that would or at least could be the difference.

patrickgzill3• 14 years ago

Good point, it would in fact make a difference.

I read the article, they do say "colocation"; besides which, XO Communications does not rent servers as far as I know. So that seems to point that they were renting the physical space that their servers are in.

Would it make a difference if they were just renting a partial rack, or a full rack that goes all the way down to the floor and is enclosed? I don't know ...

ShabbyDoo2• 14 years ago

What are the US laws in regard to search and seizure of rented storage facilities? This seems like an interesting point on the continuum between an apartment and a data center rack.

GoodIntentions• 14 years ago

IMHO, just avoid the whole question and rent outside the USA.

matthew-wegner• 14 years ago

I've been in a situation where a server was temporarily pulled by feds. They almost certainly just duplicated the drives with legally-sound forensic software.

cnbeuiwx2• 14 years ago

Im surprised nobody is discussing the reason for the pull. Obviously the FBI has copied all the data on the server and are now using a backdoor in the encryption or brute force cracking to get into the information.

There is no such thing as safe data once the physical server is confiscated, and people shouldnt trust standard encryption algorithms to be safe from backdoors.

Microsoft Windows has had backdoors for a long time I reckon. Some of it are called "bugs" once its discoved and fixed with Windows Updates. Other stuff gets introduced that way as well.

Or they could have port knocking techniques built into the closed source kernel to allow people who know the code to enter the computer without any trace.

corin_5• 14 years ago

If you were the FBI, and you had a backdoor already built into the software running on that server, would you really confiscate it and take four days to use it rather than leaving it running and hoping nobody notices you came by to activate it, and/or having it be activated over the network?

cnbeuiwx2• 14 years ago

The server was probably not running Windows.

protomyth• 14 years ago

I wonder if we've got to the point where it might actually be worth putting a camera into the server case that streams to another site? You really only have to keep under an hour of video.

The FBI took -- and mysteriously returned -- their server

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