Access Orlando, the Melissa Virus and the FBI

March 29, 1999 - Access Orlando is contacted by the New York Times that a website that we are hosting is involved with the Melissa Virus. AO investigation showed that a co-located server was indeed hosting a website known as The Source of Kaos.
AO provides server co-location enabling a client to bring in his own computer, running it's own operating system and webserver. AO then hooks the computer up to the Internet backbone at the AO facility providing high speed Internet access to the server machine at a fraction of the cost of a high speed line.
AO placed a bandwidth monitor on the co-located server realizing that the site would be heavily accessed do to the media coverage. AO contacted the server owner to find out how he wanted to handle the additional bandwidth.

March 30, 1999 - News services arrive at Access Orlando's office looking for information on sourceofkaos.com. AO's system administrator provided an interview to several news agencies. During the interviews a check of the website showed that the owner had disabled the page and put up a disclaimer webpage. Shortly afterward the owner removed the entire site.

March 31, 1999 - FBI agents contacted Access Orlando requesting AO disconnect the sourceofkaos.com machine from the Internet. At this point about 9 news agencies, local and national had contacted us. After the FBI identified themselves and placed a request in writing, AO complied with the request and removed the connection. The FBI instructed AO to call the owner, informed him of the situation and give him the number of the FBI New York office. Shortly afterward FBI agents from the Maitland office arrived at the downtown office, came in, looked at the office and the server and said they had "secured the area". The server's owner called to say he had talked to agents in New York. AO told him the agents were in the office at that time, and put him on the phone with them. The server's owner arrived at Access Orlando's office. He volunteered to sign a paper to give custody of the server to the FBI before a search warrant arrived. AO's system administrator properly shutdown the server to preserve the data on it. The FBI removed the server to their facility pending a search warrant to allow them to access the data on the server.

April 1, 1999 - About 17 different local and national news services contact Access Orlando through out the day. Some arrived at the office to take pictures of the empty space where the server was located.

April 2, 1999 - 23 national and international news services have contacted Access Orlando. This includes Japanese, BBC and Canadian. Around 12 Noon the wire services report a suspect has been arrested in New Jersey.

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