Comment by mapgrep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mapgrep | Hacker News Reader

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It seems ridiculous that this is affecting so many customers - pinboard, Curbed, one Instapaper eval/test server, bunch of individuals - when there was one FBI warrant.

Apparently the FBI took three racks. If those are whole racks, it seems excessive. https://twitter.com/#!/Pinboard/status/83256217174147072

But another issue is that Digital One told Pinboard this was due to bad router firmware -- how do you confuse a software issue and an FBI raid? https://twitter.com/#!/Pinboard/status/83257679023325186

Most likely, DigitalOne doesn't have support staff sleeping in hammocks at the colo. If you were an admin, logged in remotely (from switzerland, say, where DigitalOne is headquartered), and you saw a few racks of equipment go offline, would you:

  1. suspect that someone had walked away with 3 racks, or

  2. guess that some network hardware had gone bad?

Usually it's a horse, but sometimes it's a zebra.

When there's an FBI goon breathing down your neck telling you to keep your mouth shut, and you're pressured by customers to say something, your options aren't real attractive.

Maybe the router issue asserted itself when they removed the machines they had a warrant for and took out the pinboard et al servers.

These are blade servers so you can fit a whole bunch of them into one chassis. Still trying to figure out why they told us initially it was router trouble, and what exactly the sequence of events was.

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