German Police Bust Dark Web Hosting Cyber-Bunker Business

Hundreds of servers used to support child pornography, cybercrime, and the sale of illegal drugs have been seized in a police raid on a former NATO bunker in Germany.

German authorities arrested thirteen people between the ages of 20 and 59 on Friday after busting up a dark web hosting operation being run from a heavily fortified five-floor military bunker in the peaceful riverside town of Traben-Trarbach. 

After breaking through an iron door to gain access to the temperature-controlled bunker, 600 police searched the 1.3-acre premises and found around 200 servers stored in stacks together with disks, mobile phones, documents, and a large sum of cash. 

A 59-year-old Dutchman, who purchased the bunker in 2013, is thought to be the owner and operator of the business, which offered secured "bulletproof" website hosting to illegal businesses and concealed their activities from authorities. Sites linked to the bunker include illegal online drug stores Cannabis Road, Orange Chemicals, and Wall Street Market, formerly the second-largest global marketplace for drugs, where users could also buy hacking tools and financial-theft ware.

Suspects arrested in connection with the raid are thought to have links to organized crime and are likely to be named as accessories to over 250,000 offenses involving money counterfeiting, drugs, data mining, forged documents, and the distribution of child pornography.

Seven of the people arrested are being held in custody, with two thought to hold previous convictions for running a similar business out of a former military bunker in the Netherlands, which was sold as CyberBunker. 

Regional criminal police chief Johannes Kunz said, "I think it’s a huge success . . . that we were able at all to g ..

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