German police shut down Dark Net servers housed in former NATO bunker

Sept. 27 (UPI) -- German police stormed a "Dark Net" data center in a former NATO bunker allegedly used to host websites offering drugs, child pornography and devices to breach computers.

Over 600 police personnel were involved in the raid on what they termed a "cyberbunker data center" in the western German city of Traben-Trarbach. Seven people were arrested, with 13 more sought, although none were taken into custody at the site. The arrests occurred at a local restaurant and in the town of Schwalbach, near Frankfurt. Other raids occurred simultaneously in Poland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

"It is the first time in Germany that [arrests are] not directed against operators of shops or marketplaces, but against those who make crime possible," Jürgen Brauer, prosecutor in the Koblenz Attorney General's office, said on Friday.

The bunker, containing about 200 computer servers, is a switchboard for websites offering child pornography, illegal drugs, counterfeit money and cyberattacks, the local police office said. They added that one website previously shut down, the large-scale narcotics marketplace Wall Street Market, was operated through a server in the bunker.

The 60,000-square-foot facility includes two buildings and was acquired from NATO in 2013 by an unidentified citizen of the Netherlands.