Sun kit theft forces Silicon offline

Computer hardware thieves have stolen mission critical hardware from the London offices of technology website silicon.com, forcing it offline for three days.

The site went down after the break-in on Saturday night and was still offline at 4.30pm on Tuesday. Silicon's French site and its recruitment site were also hit.

In a statement, the company said the extended downtime was the result of "a few items of hardware" being stolen from the company following a break-in to its offices over the weekend.

A Silicon.com spokeswoman later confirmed that the missing items included valuable Sun Microsystems hardware of the type targeted recently in raids on banks, universities and other heavy users of computer equipment.

She added that the company had called in the police and would be notifying the data protection registrar of the theft, but said that it had taken all correct measures to secure customers' data in case of such an occurrence.

Police have said that Sun equipment is being stolen to order as it is particularly attractive to black-market buyers.

In November, thieves stole an estimated £1m worth of equipment from Deutsche Bank's City of London offices.