How A Gang of Thieves Pulled Off a Multimillion-Dollar Data Center Heist

CamouflagedKiwi•17 minutes ago

Bit dubious about how some of this hangs together. One detail that stood out to me:

> They removed mounting screws, disconnected the servers and put them in laundry bags — 20 bags in all, each large enough to hold four or five servers.

That's like 100kg or more of servers in each bag? I guess that is not totally impossible but it doesn't seem like a particularly easy way to move them around. It's not like putting five laptops in a bag and walking out with it over your shoulder.

elteto•10 minutes ago

Anyone who has ever seen or handled a simple 1U server knows this is absolute bullshit. And laundry bags have to be absolutely the worst possible way to transport something like this.

And they stole 80 of them? So basically a truckload? Sure.

cucumber3732842•14 minutes ago

Maybe they mean the rolling laundry carts that one puts such bags in. Not sure what one's excuse for pushing a bunch of them around a data center would be though.

I agree the details don't smell right though.

larrymcp•37 minutes ago

One question, how did they know which specific servers to take? That would've required some interesting research / espionage ahead of time, but the article didn't mention that part of the job.

jagged-chisel•12 minutes ago

> Nathaniel Rich. I am a novelist, […]

See Cloudthief here https://nathanielrich.com/books/

huitzitziltzin•about 1 hour ago

It’s kind of a fun story but it doesn’t make sense. Was that the only data in a data center in the world that’s not backed up elsewhere? Did I miss that part?

fzzzy•about 1 hour ago

Your confusion doesn't make any sense. The point was to steal a copy of the data, not prevent the original owners from having the data any more.

buran77•42 minutes ago

> The bankers “were involved in prime mortgages” and had “circumnavigated” certain regulations.

> Ellis’s assignment was to break into the data center and steal around 80 servers that hosted the incriminating files

The hit was contracted by the bankers who broke the law. Why would they need "a copy" of the evidence?

If the goal was to know what the prosecution has on them they took the worst route. Hiring petty criminals to steal the damn servers and giving them more details than they need to know is a stupid idea. Instead of hacking the data out of the servers (which would have been even easier in 2007), you now have a trail of inconvenient witnesses who can't wait to spill the secrets for a lighter sentence. Ha was probably just a decoy.

The story smells like a book promotion and a petty criminal further bolstering a high profile (but stupid) robbery.

fzzzy•40 minutes ago

Ok good point.

paleotrope•about 1 hour ago

Nope. THe story doesn't make any sense at all.

They stole about 5 milion dollars worth of computer equipment, which depending on how it's purchased is either a single cabinet of storage or a few cabinets of compute, which is largely worthless on the resale market, or if you believe the criminals, they were stealing evidence of illegal activities of the "bankers".

The story is way too sexed up and hollywood'd

giancarlostoro•about 1 hour ago

Sounds like a really awful attempt at writing a Mr Robot sequel.

samlinnfer•about 1 hour ago

And we are to believe they don't have FDE on their application servers?

chirau•6 days ago

https://archive.is/QUHSw

boveyking•6 days ago

thanks. It is my first time knowing the way to break paywall.

swader999•36 minutes ago

I was hoping for a story where they took all the bank loan data and the backups.

hackernudes•1 minute ago

That is part of the plot of the TV show "Mr. Robot". Not just the loans, but balances too!

quickthrowman•26 minutes ago

This story is making my bullshit detector go haywire. I’m guessing it was more mundane than what they claim. How much does it cost to buy one or several security guards? It’s a hell of a lot more likely than the movie script story the article contains.

Did this guy sign a book or movie deal? The only fact I believe is that they stole stuff from the data center.

How A Gang of Thieves Pulled Off a Multimillion-Dollar Data Center Heist

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