Datacenter Robbed for the Fourth Time in Two Years 437
mariushm writes "According to the Register, the Chicago-based colocation datacenter C I Host was attacked by armed intruders recently, making it the the fourth time in two years that armed thugs have made off with data. According to a letter C I Host officials sent customers, 'At least two masked intruders entered the suite after cutting into the reinforced walls with a power saw ... During the robbery, C I Host's night manager was repeatedly tazered and struck with a blunt instrument. After violently attacking the manager, the intruders stole equipment belonging to C I Host and its customers.' Aggravating the situation, C I Host representatives took several days to admit the most recent breach, according to several customers who said they lost equipment, all the while reporting the problems as 'router failures'."
The evil thing here (Score:5, Insightful)
And if they have been robbed before - why not increase the security? Four times? - That's some kind of record. Maybe it's time to check if the localization of the whole thing is incorrect and move it to a better location where it's less likely to suffer from this kind of incident?
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Advertising for a guard - "bring your own gun" (Score:5, Informative)
I couldn't make this stuff up. They're advertising for a security guard [careerbuilder.com],
"We are seeking motivated individuals" ... translation: work cheap.
"Prior security experience preferred." ... translation: not really a requirement, but if we can get it at no extra cost ...
"Some College is also preferred." ... if you managed to drop out of college instead of high school, you're more "presentable" to our insurers, who are now royally pissed at us ...
"Armed Hand-gun license/permit and ability to supply own weapon a Huge Plus! : translation: "we're cheap! You're desperate AND stupid! Let's talk!"
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That's not the way I would translate that. Now if they had a policy of forbidding handguns to employees with a concealed weapon permit I would find that stupid.
If the job entails being the victim of attacks with lethal force (and being repeated tasered and beaten is exactly that) then personally I think it's very rational to prefer an employee that has the
Re:Advertising for a guard - "bring your own gun" (Score:5, Insightful)
CI Host doesn't want to spend the money on secure facilities, instead replacing that with a rent-a-dumb-warm-body. Dumb, because taking this job w/o a permit is just begging to be thrown in jail, and if you have the permit, you can sure as heck do better than CI Host.
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Q: How in the high FUCK can you get a pistol or CCW permit in Chicago? ...
A: Only if you're a cop or military
CI Host is out to lunch (and they'll be out of business soon - the lawsuits are starting).
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A: Be a realative, family firend, or former business associate of Mayor Richard Daley. Remeber, this is Chicago, where the motto is "Vote Early, Vote Often!" Everything in city government is for sale.
Re:Bringing own gun is a good idea (Score:4, Informative)
You can't GET a carry permit in Chicago, unless you're a cop or military.
CI Host didn't invest in proper facilities. Contrary to the article summary, the robbery was made by people forcing open the door lock to the office, when nobody was there, and an employee "just happened to show up later in response to the alarm". And the crooks "just happened to have tasers" instead of guns. And the crooks "just happened to steal all the non-existent video surveillance cameras".
And the walls are not "reinforced" - they're plain ordinary office walls. Unless you want to count a new coat of paint as "reinforcement".
Re:The evil thing here (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't bust through a wall this time - they forced the lock on the front door of the office "suite", according to a customer who went there the next day to check on his equipment.
The "reinforced walls" exist in the same universe as the "router outage".
There were no employees on duty at the time of the break-in. One employee showed up and got himself tazered, AFTER the door had been forced, in response to an alarm.
This was the 4th break-in in 3 years. That alone is suspicious. Taser? Sure, can't kill a co-worker, right?
Security cameras? There's now a question as to whether they (security cameras owned by CI Host) existed in the first place. The only cameras anyone has seen are a few owned by other businesses in the building ...
All very suspicious.
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Re:The evil thing here (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The evil thing here - continuation. (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway - maybe it's time to weave in copper mesh into the T-shirt of all datacenter employees to protect against tazers.
And notice from a comment to the article that any so called man trap doesn't exist - and the security seems to have been far too relaxed. Just a fine example of how not to do things. A good datacenter is located where almost nobody knows where it is - preferably underground in a nondescript location in the countryside. A set of optical fibers will take care of all the traffic. And very few persons shall have physical access to the hardware. Think about how the military handles their datacenters.
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Re:The evil thing here - continuation. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The evil thing here - continuation. (Score:5, Interesting)
The datacenter in question is in a terrible neighborhood, and I can't see anyone bothering a truck there in the dead of night.
There was no man trap, and no security of any sort, just a tech guy who let me in and opened the glass datacenter door for me.
I doubt they have a panic button of any sort either.
You disable the one guy on call and there would be no police coming, period.
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maybe it's time to weave in copper mesh into the T-shirt
Or Maybe arming some of the guards - but then again Chicago has some very restrictive gun laws, including a complete ban on handguns, so this may not be possible without relocating.
But, that's unpossible! Everyone knows that once you ban guns in an area, crime immediately ceases and the criminals turn to a life of petting puppies and painting rainbow butterflies. Sheesh. To hear you talk, one would think that the criminals would (gasp!) exploit a legally-imposed tactical advantage or something.
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So can anyone here be bothered to explain to the ignorant what a datacenter is? I'd never had need to think about this concept until I RTFA. Is it really a place that people rent real estate to put their equipment?
It's not about the real estate, it's about redundant everything and lots of backup systems. If an idiot with a backhoe cuts their uplink, they have a couple more so that you don't lose connectivity. If someone flys a kite into the power lines, they have generators to keep things running until power is restored. If a squirrel eats a hole in the air conditioner, they have another one so things don't melt.
Or is it for third-party security, which really makes this bad.
Computer equipment is expensive and a data center has a lot of this, so their security compared to wh
Re:The evil thing here - continuation. (Score:4, Informative)
You must have very poor memory, nuzak, if you can't recall what it was like learning your trade.
When I was in high school, I knew I wanted to work in the computer field, yet I didn't know what a datacenter was. If I had met a pretentious jerk like you, I might not be managing a datacenter, today. Luckily, I met people who answered my questions instead of people like you. I also asked questions on slashdot, and learned quite a lot from this place.
And to answer the original question: A datacenter is a room full of computers with experts monitoring and maintaining them 24/7. It has special air conditioning, wiring, and security. Sometimes people rent servers or space there. Sometimes they contain only the computers of the company that owns the datacenter.
Re:The evil thing here (Score:5, Interesting)
So, they're looking to hire people that carry guns that are willing to accept a job at minimum wage. That should tell you something right there.
Re:The evil thing here (Score:5, Interesting)
In a more, uh... "free" state, yes, armed security is a realistic proposition. However such states usually have less violent crime too, so you don't need them as much.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The evil thing here (Score:4, Interesting)
Obligatory... (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't tase me, bro!
Seriously, though, this sounds like something out of a really bad Hollywood B-Movie.
I didn't know you could do stuff like this in real life.
Re:Obligatory... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, if it really happens maybe those movies aren't quite as silly as you thought.
I mean, yeah, they're stupid ... but it's harder to claim they're unrealistic now.
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It's not so much siding with thieves as it is not caring when somebody else gets ripped off, but let me tell you, that indifference disappears fast when Joe's bank account is flattened. The problem nowadays is that so many different data aggregators are keeping information
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next please.
inside job (Score:4, Interesting)
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All they need is the knowledge of what is inside combined with some knowledge of the defense systems. You can get that for a couple of beers if you ask the right person in the right way.
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Also, if thieves found it easy the first time and didn't see any significant improvements being made it makes sense from their perspective to go back. They already know the layout of the place.
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Re:inside job (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine that used to work there said that "being in jail was a fairly common excuse for missing work there". The employees seemed to hate working there, to put it mildly.
And the cokehead that owned the company loved to fire employees at a moment's notice, left and right. I highly doubt there's any employee loyalty there.
So in short, you've got highly unhappy employees that get fired at an amazing rate, with some seriously negative employee loyalty and they're surprised when stuff gets stolen?
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To be fair, there was a router failure (Score:5, Funny)
Not using them anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not using them anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
Ditto. I switched off them a year and a half or two ago. I don't remember what the final rub was, I think it was reliability (website or email going up or down seemingly randomly?). I've been on Dreamhost since, and been pretty happy (note: referral link at the bottom of my website).
I agree with the other posters. They lied. They obviously have no security (or they are facing an inside job). Four robberies in two years?
I'd switch off 'em real fast if I heard this news. I like Dreamhost but if I heard this about them I'd probably switch off them fast too. How can I trust a hosting company that can't even secure their own premises?
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I'm a happy DH customer, and while when I first signed up there were some disconcerting outages, the general experience has been rock solid, and from my own anecdotal experience I can definitely say they at least hit 99% uptime. This may not be good enough if you're trying to run an online service that demands 24/7/365 uptime, but it's certainly good enough for $10/month.
DH practices overselling to an extreme degree, I totally agree, but in my experience they're capable of handling the aggregate load. You
Still in business? (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire purpose of off-site storage is disaster recovery, and prevention of major disasters like this. Why are these guys still in business?
Re:Still in business? (Score:5, Funny)
where are the rent a cops at? (Score:2)
Doing the same thing in the big room with all of the tv screens?
Re:where are the rent a cops at? (Score:5, Funny)
No, one door to the left in the clutch room.
rj
Honesty. (Score:2)
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Haven't used DH, but from your description it'll go into my list of potential hosting providers now for whenever I need one.
One of my last bad experiences with hosting was with actadivina - they just crashed in silence, and customers were left to speculate what happened to their site and their data, etc.
At least for me (it was a hobby site), the lack of follow up was the worse part. Customers found their host provider went out of business
location, location, location (Score:5, Funny)
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Fool me once.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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router failure (Score:2)
There has to be more to it than this. (Score:2)
Kind of reminds me of that pizza bomber a couple of years ago.
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Would you target them again, knowing that their security was still weak and knowing the layout of the building and their security protocols etc? If i was these thieves, i'd keep hitting the same place over and over so long as they weren't doing anything significant about it. 4 times in 2 years is quite a reasonable rate, spaced far enough apart that it's not worth it fo
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A few possibilities.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, if they actually care enough to try to prevent these attacks, I can see three solutions, any of which should be highly effective:
Deadly force. If you are being robbed at gunpoint on a regular basis, your employees can legitimately say that they fear for their lives, and thus, purchasing of firearms is legally and morally justifiable. Perhaps a couple of guards posted at the entrance with semiautomatic rifles, plus three or four in appropriately concealed locations within the facility (or more if the facility is large enough). Criminals (armed or not) will think twice before attacking.
Electrical interference. Hook a 230 kV transmission line directly to the rebar in the walls. Anyone who tries to cut their way in will likely spontaneously combust, or at the very least, be knocked several meters. Such an attack won't happen twice.
Oxygen deprivation. You probably already have halon fire extinguishers. Assign everyone emergency oxygen masks and a red button remote. In the event of an attack, press the red button and put on your oxygen mask. Assuming you dump enough halon, it will bond with all the free oxygen in the room, incapacitating or killing the intruders in seconds. Assuming they survive, they should still be unconscious when the police arrive to arrest them.
Re:A few possibilities.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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230kV at 100A comes out to, what, about 10MW?
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Sigh. It's a Saturday, can you tell?
Either way, a fault would be spectacular.
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It says "the right of the PEOPLE to bear arms shall not be infringed". It doesn't say the right of the "militia", army, government, corporations etc, but "people". Maybe in your eyes and many other liberals, "Joe Sixpack" doesn't come under the classification of people. If "people" doesn't mean ordinary humans, than what does it mean? Maybe you and the other liberals ought to lo
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Not to mention once it faults the building would probably explode.
What I'd recommend instead would be a fine mesh of metal connected to an *ungrounded* 480V feeder line.
Re:A few possibilities.... (Score:4, Interesting)
If the criminals REALLY want to get in it's not a good idea to arm the employees anyway. Specially assigned guards maybe, but the employees of a data center - no... Just imagine if someone has a bad day... Shooting out at the boss, servers and everyone else in sight. Or if the criminals know about it they will shoot first and check later.
Assuming that it's concrete walls... But it's a good idea until the maintenance guy comes in to drill a new hole for a cable.
Halon use is outlawed, at least in some countries since it has a bad effect on the ozone layer. Carbon Dioxide is almost as good, and has the same effect. Of course - you may use any non-oxidizing gas like pure nitrogen or helium instead. As long as it lowers the oxygen level in the compartment. A much more evil way is to use carbon monoxide instead of carbon dioxide. In this case the survivability is even lower, but if it's released by accident it will be much more nasty.
But it seems that the datacenter hasn't taken action as it should and moved the servers to a different more covert location. The daily operation can remain at the same location, but since the servers aren't there anymore the criminals will have to leave empty-handed. This requires that the persons running the night-shift doesn't know about the real location of the servers unless they also are relocated.
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Hmm, the last company I worked at had a halon system in the data storage/backup room for fire protection. This was in Florida about 2 years ago. Obviously no federal law outlawing it in the US.
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Hmm, the last company I worked at had a halon system in the data storage/backup room for fire protection. This was in Florida about 2 years ago. Obviously no federal law outlawing it in the US.
IANAL, but it may be illegal to install new Halon systems. There may be a grandfather clause for existing Halon systems.
Plus (IIRC) Halon isn't actually lethal, dispite what you read in BOFH, it merely makes you dizzy and light-headed - which still isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it might help partially incapicate the thieves until they are apprehended (at which point the adrenaline may kick in, partially counter-acting the effects of the Halon.
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I'm one of the victims.... (Score:5, Informative)
Kudos to CI Host! (Score:4, Funny)
Good on them for hiring the disabled! Although perhaps the night manager position is not one suited to someone so deaf that they can't hear a Sawz-All cutting though the wall...
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I'm suprised this is not more common (Score:2)
Then, I thought about it, and being that a datacenter has more supposedly valuable stuff that you can pick up and leave with _and_ you have an easy time to sell it, well, I'm only surprised that this is not a daily occurrence.
In the "information age", what is more valuable than information? And the price/pound or volume makes information orders of magnitude more valuable than gold, art or even money itself.
It almost makes sense when y
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I was one of the victims... (Score:5, Interesting)
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The question here is if there was a change in security protocol after the first incident. If not - then you should have pulled out and changed to another datacenter, or even considered hosting it yourself.
The problem that the Police has is that as long as it's property lost and no person was physically assaulted they tend to decrease the priority of the case rather quickly. Unless it's the RIAA, MPAA or similar organization that claims loss of billions in intellectual property. A stolen computer is the
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Maybe the thieves got the routers too! (Score:2)
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But 4 times? That's ridiculous, and screams of inside job, or covering for a "Patriot Act" raid.
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Who do they Host (Score:3)
CI Host Chicago (Score:5, Informative)
First, this datacenter is literally two blocks from what is left of the infamous Cabrini-Green projects. Tough neighborhood, so it's not entirely impossible that it is an outside cracked-up scheme.
There was none of the double-man-trap doors or whatever there. The one staffer was in the back playing a Playstation. The couple of customers in the center exchanged cell numbers, so we could call each other to get let back when we needed to use the toilet.
The Dallas billing people weren't any better. Worst... host... ever.
Your server is down.. (Score:5, Funny)
Who is going to buy the gear? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where are they going to fence them. The average geek has no need of 16 core Xeons, no matter what game they play. If they were dells, (IF) they are going to have TAG #s and it wouldn't be hard to see Dell doing a trace on em, ie very hot property.
Thirdly, no legit business, at least any I have worked in, would touch (some) state of the art servers at half price, no support, from a questionble source with no history. Same goes for all the cisco kit. Bet they end up abroad.
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This is also why all small-time etailers should NEVER keep any pertinent data on the server. I run a small arts and crafts online store for my parents, and the most we keep are customer names and shipping addresses, so that they don't have to type it all back in each time they visit. Credit card info? Processed then immediately discarded. Passwords are all properly hashed. While I pray that my server never gets stolen like this, at least I know that my customers will not be in danger of identity theft (reas
Cut through RC walls? Sounds fishy to me. (Score:5, Informative)
Now, this is a non-technical publication, so "reinforced" may mean anything - like a 1/2" bar at the top and bottom, and around jambs. Also, this is Chicago, known far and wide for severe corruption in the building inspection process.
Still, anything close to a RC wall is going to require a diamond blade and a gas powered saw for any kind of efficiency at all, and the cut rate is going to be measured in single-digit (or fractional) inches per minute. Most also require a water source for cooling. You'd have to be utterly incompetent not to catch these guys before they got in.
couldn't of happened to a nicer company ;) (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=cihost.com [spamhaus.org]
You would think... (Score:2, Funny)
After the second time they would have someone sitting in there all
the time with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&W_Model_500 [wikipedia.org]
Awwww yeah...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxLmiYiwvus [youtube.com]
Take my server now bro!! I dare ya!
Here is a copy of the police reports (Score:5, Informative)
Report 1 Page 1 [imageshack.us]
Report 1 Page 2 [imageshack.us]
Report 2 Page 1 [imageshack.us]
Report 2 Page 2 [imageshack.us]
Report 3 Page 1 [imageshack.us]
Report 3 Page 2 [imageshack.us]
The guy says that $50,000 worth of stuff was stolen...not only servers, but misc crap like routers, and battery chargers for Black Berry units.
I'd say either look for a new web host startup in the Chicago area in the next year, or a lot of stuff going cheap on Ebay.
The saddest part about this is that the crims clubbed and zapped some innocent guy that would have offered zero resistance. For this, I hope they thieves go to jail for a long time.
Maybe they (Score:5, Funny)
More info pending.. (Score:3, Funny)
Frankie & The Boss: Planning a snatch and gra (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah boss! Lookie here, on da webpage!
Name: CDC-03
Location: 900 North Franklin, 3rd Floor, Chicago, IL 60610
NPA/NXX: 312/640
Not bad, Frankie...not bad! Uh-oh...what's dis? Dis could hold us up...
No signage, nondescript building
No problemo, boss! See? They gave us a picture! [cihost.com]
*snort* An dey call us teeves dumb...
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2) Add an alarm loop between the layers for added protection.
3) Lock the servers to the racks.
4) Have a good alarm company.
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As an ex-employee of the webhost in question, I am really getting a kick out of these replies...
Sorry, I spend too much time on another discussion site.
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Re:And the police were where? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck there - this is *Chicago*, remember. They, like many other large cities, much prefer to disarm the populace and then pretend that there's no more gun crime as a result.