[Pelefaifs]

The F.B.I. seized Webservers in a raid on a data center early Tuesday, causing several Web sites, including those run by the New York publisher Curbed Network, to go offline.

The raid happened at 1:15 a.m. at a hosting facility in Reston, Va., used by DigitalOne, which is based in Switzerland, the company said. The F.B.I. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the raid.

In an e-mail to one of its clients on Tuesday afternoon, a DigitalOne employee, Sergej Ostroumow, said: “This problem is caused by the F.B.I., not our company. In the night F.B.I. has taken 3 enclosures with equipment plugged into them, possibly including your server — we can not check it.”

Mr. Ostroumow said that the F.B.I. was only interested in one of the company’s clients but had taken servers used by “tens of clients.” He wrote: “After F.B.I.’s unprofessional ‘work’ we can not restart our own servers, that’s why our website is offline and support doesn’t work.” The company’s staff had been working to solve the problem for the previous 15 hours, he said.

Mr. Ostroumow said in response to e-mailed questions that it was not clear if the issues would be resolved by Wednesday.

It is not clear what the F.B.I. was looking for, or whether the raid was in response to recent attacks by hacker groups on corporate and government sites.
A government official who declined to be named said earlier in the day that the F.B.I. was actively investigating the Lulz Security group and any affiliated hackers. The official said the F.B.I. had teamed up with other agencies in this effort, including the Central Intelligence Agency and cybercrime bureaus in Europe.
The sites of the Curbed Network, including popular blogs covering real estate, restaurants and other topics, were all unavailable Tuesday evening. Lockhart Steele, Curbed’s president, said his team realized that the company’s sites were down at around 3 a.m. and contacted DigitalOne. After initially declining to say what had happened, DigitalOne explained that the F.B.I. had raided the datacenter, Mr. Steele said.

“Our servers happened to be in with some naughty servers,” he said, adding that his sites were not the target of the raid. Curbed is working to get its sites back online, probably by Wednesday.

The raid also affected a server used by Instapaper, a popular service that saves articles for later reading. Marco Arment, Instapaper’s founder, said he lost contact with a server hosted by DigitalOne early on Tuesday. Instapaper’s Web site is still operating but has slowed somewhat. Mr. Arment said he had not heard from DigitalOne or law enforcement, and had no reason to believe that Instapaper was a target of the raid.


Pinboard, a bookmarking site, was operating on a backup server and some of its features were turned off, a post on its site said.
DigitalOne provided all necessary information to pinpoint the servers for a specific I.P. address, Mr. Ostroumow said. However, the agents took entire server racks, perhaps because they mistakenly thought that “one enclosure is = to one server,” he said in an e-mail.

DigitalOne had no employees on-site when the raid took place. The data center operator, from which DigitalOne leases space, passed along the information about the raid three hours after it started with the name of the agent and a phone number to call.
Before learning of the raid, Mr. Ostroumow, who is in Switzerland with the rest of his team, thought the problem was a technical glitch.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43488005...ew_york_times/

[Mjxhnapi]

More info HERE

[gundorana]

Online commenters are questioning if this FBI raid has any connection to the hacker team aka LulzSec who last week reportedly infiltrated both the US Senate website and the CIA.gov site and just yesterday declared Open War Against All Governments and Fat Cats:
Salutations Lulz Lizards,

As we're aware, the government and whitehat security terrorists across the world continue to dominate and control our Internet ocean. Sitting pretty on cargo bays full of corrupt booty, they think it's acceptable to condition and enslave all vessels in sight. Our Lulz Lizard battle fleet is now declaring immediate and unremitting war on the freedom-snatching moderators of 2011.

Welcome to Operation Anti-Security (#AntiSec) - we encourage any vessel, large or small, to open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path. We fully endorse the flaunting of the word "AntiSec" on any government website defacement or physical graffiti art. We encourage you to spread the word of AntiSec far and wide, for it will be remembered. To increase efforts, we are now teaming up with the Anonymous collective and all affiliated battleships.

Whether you're sailing with us or against us, whether you hold past grudges or a burning desire to sink our lone ship, we invite you to join the rebellion. Together we can defend ourselves so that our privacy is not overrun by profiteering gluttons. Your hat can be white, gray or black, your skin and race are not important. If you're aware of the corruption, expose it now, in the name of Anti-Security.

Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments. If they try to censor our progress, we will obliterate the censor with cannonfire anointed with lizard blood.
It's now or never. Come aboard, we're expecting you...

History begins today.

Lulz Security

[LSg44PDu]

This is what you still find if you try to access Curbed ...


"Safari can’t open the page “http://ny.curbed.com/” because the server where this page is located isn’t responding."

[Enalsebeerkawl]

^ Only if you use Safari .

Just checked (with Firefox) and it's still kaput.

[karkinadze]

OT: Don't update to Firefox 5.0 if you have Google toolbar. Not compatible yet.

[itititit]

I may have posted this in the wrong thread, but wasn't "Lulz" the group that was going to attack the Sega hackers?

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lulzsec-hackers-sega-pass,12965.html

[ananciguinter]

It's now or never. Come aboard, we're expecting you...
The Love Boat?

[Ettiominiw]

OT: Don't update to Firefox 5.0 if you have Google toolbar. Not compatible yet.

Firefox 5 already? Crikey, I only recently rolled back from 4 because some things (Snagit, Tab Mix Plus) won't (or didn't) work! Definitely no 5, then, can't do without my Google toolbar .

[8Zgkdeee]

Tab Mix Plus works with 5.0. Waiting for Google to update the toolbar.

[Precturge]

Curbed is back up...or at least it is working for me ( I don't use Safari).

[u8MmZFmF]

Down again.

[xochgtlm]

I got Eater up for a minute a while ago, but now can't access any of the Curbed network sites.

[isogeople]

it's still working fine for me?!
curbed end of day summery:
· Prospect Park West bike lane lawsuit adjourned until July [Streetsblog]
· And actually, is the war on bike lanes over? [WSJ]
· Stuy Town regulation issues left unaddressed by rent agreement [Crain's]
· DoBro's Hugh Hardy-designed theater will break ground Friday ['Stoner]
· Emmett Smith's Harlem hotel is close to getting financing [DNAinfo]
· Office building at 335-337 Broadway may get converted to condos [Crain's]
· Park51 is trying to raise $70,000 on Kickstarter for an art gallery [NYP]
· Dumbo's Front Street has a new mural [DumboNYC]
· Inside the soon-to-be-demolished 7 1/2 Second Avenue [VNY]
· There's a whole website devoted to the color of the NYC sky [NYM]

[suiviouse]

Working fine using Firefox as I write this.

[qzgCVHex]

FBI incompetence is astounding.