Post #1682940

2026-04-25 14:05 UTC

RE: https://wandering.shop/@susankayequinn/116442233799533461 When you think about it, a night spent plundering a data centre is likely to be a lot more profitable than tearing up railway signalling cables for the copper. As a criminal you’re much less likely to get killed by a train and everyone else is less likely to be inconvenienced.

Replies (4)

@cstross@wandering.shop 2026-04-25 20:16

@christineburns@mastodon.green @AlisonW@fedimon.uk @susankayequinn@wandering.shop Also railway signaling tech these days is switching over to fiber-optic, which is valueless to the scrap metal market. (But data center kit is much more specialised than it used to be: back in the 90s organized gangs used to loot the RAM from office computers in London business parks, exfiltrating it via the post room, leaving just enough in each PC to let them boot so it wouldn't be detected until the morning post had gone out ...)

Open ##1684708
@lolcat@digipres.club 2026-04-25 14:21

@christineburns@mastodon.green This happened to the second Beowulf cluster ever built. Somehow, someone who had access to the machine room at Goddard Spaceflight Center where the cluster was located managed to discreetly remove half the RAM from all ~100 nodes in one night. That was ~32 years ago.

Open ##2482813
@FourT4@mastodonapp.uk 2026-04-25 14:36

@christineburns@mastodon.green when do we start?

Open ##2482814
@kiwi2002@mstdn.social 2026-04-25 14:46

@christineburns@mastodon.green Still think, capturing the data in an intelligent fashion is the most profitable way to "rob" a data centre. (Yes - this can be done by taking physical storage; which would make for dramatic video.)

Open ##2482815