Herman-Johan X and his colleagues dressed as they introduced themselves to the Traben-Trarbach City Council. In a non-public meeting, they explained why they were interested in the Bundeswehr bunker at the top of the mountain and how they wanted to use it in the future. They presented their plans for a new data center and promised 50 to 100 new jobs for the region. But they did not come for years. For that very many policemen came.
One and a half weeks ago, special forces stormed the computer center in the bunker, and GSG 9 was also involved in the deployment. According to the police, there were mainly illegal websites up there over the city, where criminals are said to have evicted weapons, drugs, fake documents or child pornography. Cyber attacks should also have run over the underground data center.
The head of the Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate, Johannes Kunz, is full of praise the day after the visit: "It was a huge success," that we were even able, with police forces in the bunker system, which is still secured at the highest military level to penetrate ".
This raises the question in Traben-Trarbach for some, why suspected criminals could buy a bunker system secured at a military level - just from the German state.
LKA Rhineland Palatinate
Land from above: The bunker on the "Mont Royal" is well known to the Traben-Trarbachern
For the 6000-inhabitant town on the Moselle, the bunker, "our bunker", as some say, was an important economic factor for a long time. For decades, the office for geoinformation of the Bundeswehr was housed in the five-story building, a kind of weather service of the troops. But in 2007, the Federal Ministry of Defense decided to close the site. A blow to many employees.
The Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks (Bima) was to sell the bunker - and apparently as soon as possible. Because the operation of several thousand square meters large plant is expensive: The ventilation must continue to run, as well as groundwater pumps, which prevent the four underground floors full of water. "That is why the Bima offered the bunker before the use of the Bundeswehr on the open land market for sale," said the institution on SPIEGEL inquiry.
A data center came as requested
According to a press release of the member of parliament Peter Bleser (CDU), there was a clear desire for "a 'warm' handover of the protective structure with existing IT infrastructure after the deduction, shall mean, without much effort operational and operational to the successor. So should it be very fast this time?
The Bima answers the SPIEGEL to this question, it was always endeavor to avoid vacancies and "unnecessary intermediate management costs": "In this respect, a 'warm handover' in all sales cases is the ideal case." A "Verwertungszwang" did not exist.
There were many ideas for the bunker area over the years. A children's hospital was considered, as well as a mushroom cultivation. But nothing came of it. The data center, however, was perfect for a "warm" handover - after all, the Bundeswehr had already installed large computer systems there.
LKA Rhineland Palatinate
Police picture from the bunker: Old stocks of the Bundeswehr
But already in 2012, when the interested parties presented themselves in the suit of the city, many a city council member was not comfortable with the matter. This report several local politicians who were there at the time. The Dutch were strangely vague in their presentation, about what should be stored on the servers. Although the city had hardly any say in the matter anyway, it had to formally adapt the land use plan for use as a data center. In the end, one agreed for lack of alternatives.
According to Bima, there were two bidders for the property, they had opted for the more economical offer. On June 26, 2013, the purchase agreement was notarised.
Only a few days after the sale appears in the local newspaper, the "Trier folk friend", an article about the new owner: It seems to be the former owner of the company CyberBunker, a web host, who claims to accept any kind of customer business Exception of child pornography and everything related to terrorism ".
Exactly this description will be heard again six years later, in the LKA press conference on the use of bunkers. She has also been read in the years in between in an article by SPIEGEL ONLINE from 2013 or on the former website of the company CyberBunker, which can still be accessed via a web archive. In addition, the company has a Wikipedia entry.
Old friends, now with new property
So it was no secret: Investor X., 59, had once operated a cyberbunker around the turn of the millennium in his homeland. Near the town of Kloetinge, he converted a former NATO commando bunker to a private, supposedly super-secure data center. In 2002, a fire broke out in the subsoil, and when it was cleared, emergency personnel in the bunker not only discovered computers, but also a drug laboratory. X. protested to sublet the rooms and have nothing with them. He sold the bunker later, but he continued his cyber bunker business for years - even without a bunker.
Until he came across the property on the Mosel. Allegedly, he bought them for only 350,000 euros, after all, the construction has immense maintenance costs. At the address "Über den Weinbergen 1", X. 2014 registered his new company in the German commercial register: Calibour GmbH. Business purpose: "The operation of a data center."
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Illegal Data Center: This is what the "Cyberbunker" looks likeAlthough the name of the buyer was not communicated publicly, the "Trierische Volksfreund" explained to his readers that a CyberBunker comrade in a Dutch medium was referred to as a "hacker king", the owner himself as a "technoanarchist". And that this environment should have been one of the biggest DDoS attacks in history, which has at times slowed down all Internet traffic.
"What I wrote back then could be read on the internet, and I just found out about it through Google," says Winfried Simon, the journalist who wrote the article in the local paper. There was no denial after the article was published. After that, he had not heard anything for years.
The hosting itself is not illegal - the operators are responsible
There was not much to hear and see. The new owner had earthen ramparts piled up for protection and watchdogs running across the grounds. Because there was always talk, Traben-Trarbach's mayor Patrice-Christian-Roger Langer has visited the data center three times, even with colleagues from the city council. Langer, who used to work for years in the bunker himself, was allowed to look behind every door, he says. The rooms had been renovated and Mr. X. very accommodating. Of course, he did not see what was happening on the computers, says Langer.
LKA Rhineland Palatinate
Server cabinets in cyber bunker: From the outside little insightful
And even if: For the content of websites is first responsible for the respective operator, not the hoster, who merely provides the infrastructure and may not even know of any illegal activities. Accordingly confidently gave itself after the police use a man from the company environment, which called then "hacker king" Sven K., on Facebook: Behind the whole action probably also envy of those, who once worked in that bunker, which now a stranger simply bought. If the German police consider cyberbunker customers so criminal, why have they never come to a court order to end individual contracts?
The company always advertised not to be interested in what their customers do - but only in advance. According to the website, it was possible to pay with Bitcoin transfers or Western Union transfers and even cash: "Cash can be handed in at the gate. [... ...] Write your project code on the envelope and hand it over to our security staff ", it was said about the old bunker in the Netherlands.
LKA Rhineland Palatinate
Night image of the police operation: Special forces were needed for the well-secured terrain
Should German authorities have been warned and have to examine the buyer more closely? The Bima explains that they had also voted before the sale with the Land Office of Criminal Investigation Rhineland-Palatinate. "At that time, however, there were no findings that would have justified an exclusion of the later buyer from the divestment proceedings."
According to the LKA, however, it was the municipality administration, which then informed about the intended real estate sale and "has named the potential buyer," as LKA chief Kunz said at the press conference. Accordingly, there was "2013 at least once on the Internet first evidence that criminal activities could play a role there." By 2015, it was then investigated, until even a preliminary investigation could be initiated.
The police expect months or years of investigation into cyberbunkers. In Traben-Trarbach, the question arises as to what will happen to the bunker - and whether it will be maintained.
LKA Rhineland Palatinate
Battery supply in the bunker: Maintenance of the system is considered to be expensive
Mayor Langer has been startled by his visits to the complicated building services: "When we worked there, there were twelve men who worked around the clock in shifts around the clock, 365 days a year." Highly qualified people had been the ones who had taken care of groundwater pumps, emergency power system and air conditioning. "And there was apparently only a single janitor doing all that, I could not imagine."
If the building, in which underground oil tanks and a large battery system are housed, not properly maintained, threatening the Moselort namely, in addition to the Darknet problem may also have an environmental problem.
