Web hosting firm says FBI took servers in raid

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BOSTON | Wed Jun 22, 2011 12:35pm EDT

BOSTON (Reuters) - More than 120 websites have been down for over a day after the FBI removed servers from a web-hosting company in Northern Virginia in an early morning raid on Tuesday, according to the company that runs that facility.

FBI officials declined comment on the matter. The agency, which leads investigations of many cyber crimes, generally does not comment on ongoing investigations.

Federal agents raided a Reston, Virginia, web-hosting facility owned by DigitalOne of Switzerland at 1:15 a.m. on Tuesday as part of an investigation into one of the firm's customers, DigitalOne Chief Executive Sergej Ostroumow said via email. He did not identify that customer.

Ostroumow said that federal agents took "tens" of servers that were unrelated to the targeted customer, resulting in a widespread service disruption for his clients.

"The FBI's work wasn't accurate and we can still not restart it," he said in the email.

Sites that have been down for more than 30 hours as a result of the raid include ones belonging to publishing houses, payment providers and smaller web-hosting companies that use DigitalOne's data center to serve their clients, he said.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle, editing by Dave Zimmerman)
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Comments (1)
Panmumu wrote:
Wow, the Feds can not stop drugs or people from the south, but they sure can hit the Napster users. How is the hopey changey thingy workin’ out for ya?

Jun 22, 2011 10:05pm EDT  --  Report as abuse
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