CyberBunker

CyberBunker is an Internet service provider that, according to its website, hosts "services to any Web site 'except child pornography and anything related to terrorism'". It served as a host for The Pirate Bay and as one of the many Wikileaks mirrors.^[1][2] CyberBunker has also been accused of being a host for spammers, botnet command-and-control servers, malware and online scams.^[3] The company has also been involved in Border Gateway Protocol hijacks of IP addresses used by Spamhaus and the United States Department of Defense.^[4] The Spamhaus hijack was part of an exceptionally large distributed denial of service attack launched against them in March 2013. Because of the size of this attack it received considerable mainstream media attention.

The company is named for the place it was once housed in, a former Cold War bunker.^[5] The bunker was built in 1955 just outside the small town of Kloetinge in the south of the Netherlands. It was intended as a war time Provincial Military Command Center (Dutch: Provinciaal Militair Commando) of the Dutch military that could withstand a nuclear attack.^[6] It was discarded by the Dutch military in 1994.^[7] As of 2016 the physical location of CyberBunker is a widely known "secret".^[8]

History

CyberBunker has a long history of run-ins with the law. In 2002 a fire broke out in the bunker they operated from. After the fire was put out it was discovered that besides internet hosting services an MDMA laboratory was in operation.^[9] Three of the four men charged with the operation of the lab were convicted to three-year prison sentences; the fourth was acquitted due to a lack of evidence.^[10]

The Pirate Bay

In October 2009 BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay, which had been subjected to legal action by various anti-piracy groups including Dutch copyright organisation BREIN,^[11] moved away from Sweden to CyberBunker. In 2010 the Hamburg district court ruled that CyberBunker, operating in Germany as CB3Rob Ltd & Co KG, was no longer allowed to host The Pirate Bay, being subject to a €250,000 fine or up to 2 years imprisonment for each infringement.^[1]

Spamhaus

In October 2011, Spamhaus identified CyberBunker as providing hosting for spammers and contacted their upstream provider, A2B, asking that service be cancelled. A2B initially refused, blocking only a single IP address linked to spamming. Spamhaus responded by blacklisting all of A2B address space. A2B capitulated, dropping CyberBunker, but then filed complaints with the Dutch police against Spamhaus for extortion.^[12][13]

In March 2013, Spamhaus added CyberBunker to its blacklist. Shortly afterwards a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack of previously unreported scale (peaking at 300 gigabits per second; an average large-scale attack is often around 50 Gbit/s, while the largest known previously publicly reported attack was 100 Gbit/s)^[14] was launched against Spamhaus email and web servers using a Domain Name System (DNS) amplification attack;^[15][16] as of 27 March 2013 the attack had lasted for over a week. Steve Linford, chief executive for Spamhaus, said that they had withstood the attack. Other companies, such as Google, had made their resources available to help absorb the traffic.^[16] The attack was being investigated by five different national cyber-police-forces around the world. Spamhaus alleged that Cyberbunker, in cooperation with "criminal gangs" from Eastern Europe and Russia, was behind the attack; Cyberbunker did not respond to the BBC's request for comment on the allegation.^[16]

CloudFlare, an Internet security firm located in Frankfurt/Main in Germany and assisting Spamhaus in combating the DoS attack was also targeted. On 28 March 2013, CyberBunker's website went offline for a short period of time, possibly becoming victim of a DDoS attack themselves.^[17]

On 29 March 2013, the unrelated secure data storage company BunkerInfra issued a press release stating they have been the owners of the former military bunker since 2010 and that any claims made by CyberBunker regarding their continued usage of the complex are false and that they have not been operating from the bunker since the fire in 2002.^[18] Businessweek reported them as stating that the bunker was "full of junk" when they acquired it, and quoted Guido Blaauw, their general manager, as stating that the CyberBunker publicity material was "all Photoshop".^[19]

On 25 April 2013 Sven Olaf Kamphuis, a vocal spokesman for CyberBunker, was arrested at the request of Dutch authorities near Barcelona by Spanish Police after collaboration through Eurojust.^[20] An anonymous press release uploaded on Pastebin the following day demanding the release of Kamphuis threatened with more large-scale attacks should he remain in custody.^[21][22] The Spanish authorities reported that Kamphuis operated from a well-equipped bunker and used a van as a mobile computing office. No further information on this bunker was provided.^[23] In September 2013 it was revealed that a second arrest had been made in April in relation to the Spamhaus attack, the suspect being a 16-year-old from London.^[24][25]

References

External links

• Official CyberBunker website

Coordinates: 51°30′08″N 3°54′26″E / 51.502163°N 3.907181°E / 51.502163; 3.907181