FBI in massive server raids

data centre in Reston, Virginia and seized servers, causing several high-profile Web sites to go dark, writes PCMag.

According to a New York Times report, the FBI showed up at the data centre, owned by Switzerland-based DigitalOne, around 1:15am and removed the equipment. The move resulted in services like Pinboard, Instapaper, and the Curbed Network going offline.

DigitalOne chief Sergej Ostroumow sent an e-mail to clients on Tuesday that said FBI took “3 enclosures with equipment plugged into them, possibly including your server - we cannot check it,” the Times reported.

According to an unnamed government official, the FBI has been actively on the hunt for hackers, says Digital Trends.

The FBI has teamed up with the CIA and other European cyber crime bureau's in order to investigate LulzSec and hackers connected to the group.

Ostroumow did not say which company was being targeted, but his company helped the FBI find the specific IP Address they were looking for. The DigitalOne executive was confused though when government agents took entire server racks with them, which seemed more than they were looking for.

The raids came mere hours before the news that a UK teen was charged with computer hacking under the Criminal Law Act and Computer Misuse Act by officers from the UK Metropolitan Police Service's Police Central e-Crime Unit, notes Fox News.

Clearly has been rumoured to be connected with the LulzSec hacker group, which has gained notoriety in recent months for high-profile hacking attacks on the Web sites of corporations and governments, including the CIA and Sony.

It was unclear what - if anything at all - connected the raid and the FBI's ongoing investigation of the hackers.