The police have seized dozens of servers from a data centre in Limburg that were allegedly used to distribute child pornography, as well as carry out cyberattacks and phishing scams.
The seizures are part of an investigation into an unnamed company, a so-called bulletproof hoster, which provides web space and server access to criminal groups.
Police say they have now gained information on over 3,000 customers who used the servers, and that the hunt for those people is now underway.
At the same time, the FBI and German police also acted against suspects revealed in the investigation, seizing cryptocurrency and shutting down online infrastructure.
The location of the data centre has not yet been made public since the servers in question were housed alongside legal ones, local broadcaster L1 reported.
Police confirmed around 50 servers were taken on Tuesday. The US department of justice announced at the same time that the FBI had taken action against a site called Virtualine, with assistance from Dutch, British and German authorities. The connection between these cases has not yet been confirmed.
The seizure follows a raid in July on the hosting company used by Motherless, a porn website which contained huge amounts of abusive material. NOS later reported that the site’s own employees had uploaded child pornography.
