Massive Criminal Trial Begins For 'Cyberbunker' Dark Web Server

The Times of London reports: A gang of cyberexperts turned a former German military bunker into one of Europe's biggest hubs for the "dark web" and a superhighway for at least a quarter of a million offences, including drug trafficking and the falsification of identity papers, a court has been told.

Four people from the Netherlands, three Germans and a Bulgarian are accused of creating a digital safe haven in which criminals could operate with impunity.
Dutch News reports: Deals which were processed through the servers include drugs — with platforms such as Cannabis Road — which had millions of active users, the Telegraaf said on Tuesday. Other sites allowed people to order fake money and ID papers, and the bunker was also used to stage a bot attack on German telecom firm Deutsche Telekom, the paper said.

The investigation into the bunker took years of observation and phone tapping, culiminating in a raid involving 650 police officers in September 2019. .
Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: Prosecuters believe to have a case which is set to take 15 months until the end of 2021 simply due to the sheer mass of material they've gatherd to make a case. The defendants, which include adolescents at the time of crime, face up to 15 years in prison should they be convicted.
As recently as this June, the cyberbunker was still being contacted by several phishing sites, as well as thousands of bots looking for their old command and control server.

15 years?

[quonset]

That's it? For deliberately allowing criminals to operate, including the killing of people, and you might, might, get 15 years in prison?

Bernie Madoff got 150 years in prison and all he did was steal money.

What a joke.

Re:

[BAReFO0t]

You are confusing batshit insane private for-profit punisment durations common in the US with real-world realistic ones.

150 years? Triple-life?? What, are you planning to imprison vampires and Cthulhu??
And life... for stealing three snickers bars? WAT?

Aside from the brutally blatantly.obvious question anyome who does all his thinking with his brain asks: What good is ever supposed to come of reacting to violence and harm with more violence and harm? (Cue the knee-jerk reactions ..) To set an example ... tha

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, who was killed exactly?

Re: 15 years?

[ThurstonMoore]

I was wondering the same thing. As long as no one was killed I don't see a problem.

Re:

[gosso920]

Don't steal. The government hates competition.

Re:

[bugs2squash]

15 years is a long time, especially in a society that values and respects freedom. Enough to be a serious deterrent for anyone thinking of doing this and enough to prevent anyone from considering doing it again. I also suspect that the German prison system has less of a track record of preparing prisoners for re-incarceration later (as repeat customers so to speak).

Re: 15 years?

[netruner]

It may be worth noting that deterrents only work on rational people. The people who do these things can be somewhat less rational.

Re:

[griebels2]

This trail is more show than anything else. For being one of the greatest hubs of illicit material on the Internet, they did have a shabby business model, because the whole Cyberbunker operation didn't make much more than a few hundred thousand dollars a year. So, either someone is blowing this thing so far out of proportion, it hurts to even look at it, or those who ran Cyberbunker must have been ignorant jerks, selling their high-risk services for pennies...

Re:

[rtb61]

I would have to side with the idea of rewarding them. The 650 officers were not about the raid but preserving and sifting through the material, to prosecute all those now exposed. Likely they will be trying to leverage access to encrypted material for reduced sentences, start of high as high as they can and reduce it all to time served and a fine for all the encryption keys.

Used those services, well, you are in deep shite and that information will be all passed back to your investigatory agencies and they w

I've got a fever!

[BAReFO0t]

And the only prescription is more cyber!

Excuse me,
I meant:

I've got a cyberfever!
And the only cyberprescription is more cybercyber!

*iPad-using poitician-luddites begin to sing*
Cyber cyber cyber cyber [youtu.be]
cyber cyber cyber cyber..
LOVELY CYBER! WONDERFUL CYBER!...

Setting the stage for global censorship

[MakerDusk]

Don't these same arguments apply to backbone ISPs as well?

Re: Setting the stage for global censorship

[netruner]

I believe the legal term they fall under is "safe harbor". You'll have to check me on that. There's also legal concepts for proportion of legal vs illegal use. If it were set up where it's only use is to do facilitate illegal activity, well, it's clearly an accessory to that activity.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The dark side of cyberpunk

[alternative_right]

If you spread information, lots of people will use it to steal lots of things. Theft and criminal behavior seem to be endemic to humanity. Perhaps it is good that the criminals have moved on to virtual crime instead of hitting people, but they seem to be stealing a lot of money. Maybe humanity needs at least one Full Libertarian "anarchy zone" where people can buy all the drugs and Thai ladyboys that they can afford.

Background info

[SlayerOfKings]

Very good but also very long article about the background of this can be found here: https://www.newyorker.com/maga... [newyorker.com]

Re:

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

Yeah and they ended up being taken down by the gardener who was a spy for the government... was a really great read.