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Can KickassTorrents Make a Comeback?


Batu69

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Yesterday the U.S. Government delivered a massive blow to KickassTorrents. With its alleged founder arrested and pretty much the entire site's operation compromised, it's not obvious that there will be a Pirate Bay style comeback anytime soon.

 

Founded in 2009, KickassTorrents (KAT) grew out to become the largest torrent site on the Internet with millions of visitors a day.

As a result, copyright holders and law enforcement have taken aim at the site in recent years. This resulted in several ISP blockades around the world, but yesterday the big hit came when the site’s alleged founder was arrested in Poland.

 

Soon after the news was made public KAT disappeared, leaving its users without their favorite site. The question that’s on many people’s minds right now is whether the site will make a Pirate Bay-style comeback.

 

While it’s impossible to answer this question with certainty, the odds can be more carefully weighed by taking a closer look at the events that led up to the bust and what may follow.

First off, KickassTorrents is now down across all the site’s official domain names. This downtime seems to be voluntary in part, as the authorities haven’t seized the servers. Also, several domains are still in the hands of the KAT-team.

 

That said, the criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Chicago does reveal that KAT has been heavily compromised (pdf).

According to the feds, Artem Vaulin, a 30-year-old from Ukraine, is the key player behind the site. Over the years, he obfuscated his connections to the site, but several security holes eventually revealed his identity.

 

With help from several companies in the United States and abroad, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan identifies the Ukrainian as the driving force behind the site.

 

The oldest traces to Vaulin are the WHOIS records for various domains, registered in his name early 2009.

“A review of historical Whois information for KAT….identified that it was registered on or about January 19, 2009, to Artem Vaulin with an address located in Kharkiv, Ukraine,” the affidavit reads.

 

This matches with records obtained from domain registrar GoDaddy, which indicate that Vaulin purchased three KAT-related domain names around the same time.

The agent further uncovered that the alleged KAT founder used an email address with the nickname “tirm.” The same name was listed as KAT’s “owner” on the site’s “People” page in the early days, but was eventually removed in 2011.

 

Tirm on KAT’s people page
 
KATpeople

 

The HSI agent also looked at several messages posted on KAT, which suggest that “tirm” was actively involved in operating the site.

“As part of this investigation, I also reviewed historical messages posted by tirm, KAT’s purported ‘Owner.’ These postings and others indicate that tirm was actively engaged in the early running of KAT in addition to being listed as an administrator and the website’s owner,” the HSI agent writes.

 

Assisted by Apple and Facebook the feds were then able to strengthen the link between Vaulin, tirm, and his involvement in the site.

Facebook, for example, handed over IP-address logs from the KAT fanpage. With help from Apple, the investigator was then able to cross-reference this with an IP-address Vaulin used for an iTunes transaction.

 

“Records provided by Apple showed that [email protected] conducted an iTunes transaction using IP Address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The same IP Address was used on the same day to login into the KAT Facebook Account.”

 

In addition, Apple appears to have handed over private email conversations which reference KAT, dating back several years. These emails also mention a “kickasstorrent payment,” which is believed to be revenue related.

 

“I identified a number of emails in the [email protected] account relating to Vaulin’s operation of KAT. In particular, between on or about June 8, 2010, and on or about September 3, 2010,” the HSI agent writes.

 

More recent records show that an IP-address linked to KAT’s Facebook page was also used to access Vaulin’s Coinbase account, suggesting that the Bitcoin wallet also assisted in the investigation.

 

“Notably, IP address 78.108.178.77 accessed the KAT Facebook Account about a dozen times in September and October 2015. This same IP Address was used to login to Vaulin’s Coinbase account 47 times between on or about January 28, 2014, through on or about November 13, 2014.”

 

As for the business side, the complaint mentions a variety of ad payments, suggesting that KAT made over a dozen million dollars in revenue per year.

It also identifies the company Cryptoneat as KAT’s front. The Cryptoneat.com domain was registered by Vaulin and LinkedIn lists several employees of the company who were involved in the early development of the site.

 

“Many of the employees found on LinkedIn who present themselves as working for Cryptoneat are the same employees who received assignments from Vaulin in the KAT alert emails,” the complaint reads.

 

Interestingly, none of the other employees are identified or charged.

To gather further information on the money side, the feds also orchestrated an undercover operation where they posed as an advertiser. This revealed details of several bank accounts, with one receiving over $28 million in just eight months.

 

“Those records reflect that the Subject Account received a total of approximately €28,411,357 in deposits between on or about August 28, 2015, and on or about March 10, 2016.”

 

Bank account
 
bankkat

 

Finally, and crucially, the investigators issued a warrant directed at the Canadian webhost of KickassTorrents. This was one of the biggest scores as it provided them with full copies of KAT’s hard drives, including the email server.

 

“I observed […] that they were all running the same Linux Gentoo operating system, and that they contained files with user information, SSH access logs, and other information, including a file titled ‘passwd’ located in the ‘etc’ directory,” the HSI agent writes.

 

“I also located numerous files associated with KAT, including directories and logs associated to their name servers, emails and other files,” he adds.

Considering all the information U.S. law enforcement has in its possession, it’s doubtful that KAT will resume its old operation anytime soon.

 

Technically it won’t be hard to orchestrate a Pirate Bay-style comeback, as there are probably some backups available. However, now that the site has been heavily compromised and an ongoing criminal investigation is underway, it would be a risky endeavor.

 

Similarly, uploaders and users may also worry about what information the authorities have in their possession. The complaint cites private messages that were sent through KAT, suggesting that the authorities have access to a significant amount of data.

 

While regular users are unlikely to be targeted, the information may provide useful for future investigations into large-scale uploaders. More clarity on this, the site’s future, and what it means for the torrent ecosystem, is expected to become evident when the dust settles.

 

TorrentFreak.

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32 minutes ago, psyko666 said:

When you try to download a torrent  you get this

azUwDq1.png

 

When you click on it Ublock blocks it

68lDu3C.png

 

The real Kat  let me dl torrents  so at best its a scam clone site posting magnets from other p2p sites. When TPB closed down there were lots of these only good for magnets and you can  find those magnets  at other p2p sites that's not been raided by ICE  yet . :)

 

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3 hours ago, Batu69 said:

According to the feds, Artem Vaulin, a 30-year-old from Ukraine

 livin'  same city with this guy

 

4 minutes ago, steven36 said:

When you try to download a torrent  you get this

use magnet bro

proof

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5 minutes ago, gipsy said:

 livin'  same city with this guy

 

use magnet bro

proof

I said it was only good for magnets Im not going use that those clone sites  , i go to other p2p sites were is still open, Google top torrent  sites 2016  you will find a large list .

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3 minutes ago, steven36 said:

I said it was only good for magnets Im not going use that those clone sites  , i go to other p2p sites were is still open, Google top torrent  sites 2016  you will find a large list .

ok bro,seems i wasn't too attentive .

 

 

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23 minutes ago, gipsy said:

ok bro,seems i wasn't too attentive .

 

 

Even Kat warn people not to use these sites back last year.

https://torrentfreak.com/kickasstorrents-warns-users-of-malicious-copycats-151009/

 

It may be a scam site or even worse a honeypot  a site put up by the feds , i think all  open warez sites have problems with clones ?

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hard to say man,different worlds we r livin';) i do not give a f**k about federals here, but (honestly) used original kickass just couple of times-quite enough local trackers for me.any way should think twice before use it by ppl from US & EU imo.

 

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32 minutes ago, gipsy said:

hard to say man,different worlds we r livin';) i do not give a f**k about federals here, but (honestly) used original kickass just couple of times-quite enough local trackers for me.any way should think twice before use it to ppl from US & EU imo.

 

Even in the USA it more of a money thing  if they catch you and you was not doing it for  profit the worse will happen to you would get sued and that really dont happen that often . The people that go to jail for it was making a profit off of it $28 million ?

 

When  they closed down Team IMAGiNE's p2p site witch was hosted in Canada as well  they were caught for selling there releases to the Asian underground. Those boys got years in prison do you remember this back in 2012? These guys were the biggest distributors of pre retail  before it came out in the theaters  now China is  .The USA  cant stop all p2p sites . :P 
 

 

 

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USA=corporate business, knowledge should be free but they are trying to stop a river with a tea spoon, it's the same with drungs.

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1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

USA=corporate business, knowledge should be free but they are trying to stop a river with a tea spoon, it's the same with drungs.

Lol in my whole life its never been like that bro and i'm no spring chicken , even these pirates today who run these malware ad infested places you get you're free fix  are churning in millions from donations   and ads its the battle of two kinds of greed. The  good old  boys  who ran the TPB  that done it for free went to prison and got out of P2P.  When you p2p  you're just a pawn for these P2P kingpins you get you're fix in return  for making them rich . These sites dont have to exist for P2P to work even  back in the early 2000s  our download clients had a internal search we didn't even have to open our browser to download files and there still clients like this out there  today. 

 

Before the internet it was never free and pirates stole it then and sold it too . Piracy  is 1000s of years old the way its done has changed because of the digital age but its still very much alive and kicking.  You need to accept it for what really is and  forget about it .. If there was no more stuff to download it's not going to kill you too pay a few bucks to watch a movie after all thats what we did before the digital age and fast internet,

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KickAss Torrents is dead for sure, but online piracy will continue

 

WAzwiv4.jpg

 

KickAss Torrent isn't the first to be targeted by the US government for illegal distribution of digital content

 

Earlier this morning, news broke of Artem Vaulim, the founder of KickAss Torrents, being arrested in Poland and the domain name being seized, making the website unoperational. In short, the most beloved Torrent Site for those with piracy close to their hearts has gone dark, and in all likelihood for good.

 

Additionally, alternate popular proxies have also been swiftly taken down. As of writing this article, the five most popular KAT proxy sites, along with the main website are no longer accessible due to the fact that KAT servers across the globe are being taken down, instead of just the domain names being seized. We have seen how earlier blocking one domain name caused the website to crop back up with a new one, so a server-level take down seems to be the only way to put a website into the ground once and for all.

 

The case of Artem Vaulim and KickAss Torrents is a little different, however, from that of other Torrent websites. It has been known that the company often avoided adhering to DMCA takedown notices by finding legal loopholes, including, but not limited to, questioning the validity of the complainant’s ownership of copyright.

 

KickAss Torrents isn’t the first to be targeted by the US government for illegal distribution of digital content, with popular websites like The Piratebay going through its own fair share of arrests and takedowns in the last few years. But it is unlikely that taking one website down, regardless of its popularity, is going to have the effect that the authorities are looking for. We have seen time and time again how people find ways to skirt copyright law. When one source goes down, we have seen alternatives crop up, KickAss Torrents itself being one of them. KAT shot to popularity back in the day when The Pirate Bay was having trouble keeping its domain names active.

 

Before The Pirate Bay, the legal system chased down and caused the shutting down of Suprnova, a very popular torrent site before The Pirate Bay shot to fame. In the last ten years, many torrent sites such as Newnova (rebirth of Suprnova), IsoHunt, TorrentSpy have all had their tryst with the legal system, forcing them to cease operations at one point or the other. One popular torrent distribution site from the early days that still remains active is Demonoid, although use of the website has severely declined in the last few years. Demonoid was an “invite-only” torrent site that reached critical fame in the 2006-2008 era, quickly getting targeted by law enforcement and consequently had to take all its trackers offline in 2012 for a period of almost two years. In the absence of Demonoid rose The Pirate Bay, in whose absence rose KickAss torrents. It would seem that there may be a pattern here.

 

The internet is a free domain and as such, no matter to what extent authorities try and police it, it will never truly be in a state of control. Piracy has become an undeniable fact of life for most users. The sheer number of people engaged in piracy is reason enough for an alternative to crop up. When Rapidshare was taken offline, Megaupload took its place. When Megaupload was seized, several sharing/hosting sites cropped up. Similarly, as one popular Torrent site has been taken down, another has taken its place, almost seamlessly. Even today, with KickAss Torrents being gone (for now), we are still left with plenty of options to get our fix of illegally downloaded movies and as authorities prepare to move in on the last remaining bastions of piracy, new alternatives are coming up each day. It is essential to remember that a particular website may have been taken down, but those uploading and downloading the content remain free and it would not be long before they find a new platform to connect on.

 

The real grey area for torrents lie on the fact that BitTorrent is only a transmission protocol and as such isn’t really a “product” that can be made illegal. In fact, BitTorrent is used rather frequently for totally legitimate use by many companies. Often large files are moved around within organisations using the BitTorrent protocol. Many popular Linux Distros are made available for download via the BitTorrent protocol as well. One of the most popular companies to use the BitTorrent protocol is Blizzard Entertainment that uses its own Torrent client to download games and updates such as those for World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo III. In fact, if companies like Microsoft and Apple were to start releasing their OS increments over the BitTorrent protocol, the result would be less bandwidth use at their end (as Blizzard Entertainment discovered) along with faster distribution of the software to its users as Microsoft and Apple servers would not be getting choked catering to and delivering thousands of download requests in one go.

 

 

While BitTorrent struggles to be adopted by legitimate companies for legitimate use, it finds itself in the hands of individuals who have truly demonstrated the power of the protocol. It is impressive that BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer sharing protocol can handle the transfer of immense gigabytes of data without breaking down. The protocol could be put to much better use, but what becomes of it is something that only time will tell. As of now, what we do know is that KickAss Torrents is gone, and soon, another shall take its place.

 

Source:

http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/kickass-torrents-is-dead-but-not-online-piracy-2927537/

 

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visualbuffs
Spoiler
On 7/21/2016 at 5:49 PM, Batu69 said:

Yesterday the U.S. Government delivered a massive blow to KickassTorrents. With its alleged founder arrested and pretty much the entire site's operation compromised, it's not obvious that there will be a Pirate Bay style comeback anytime soon.

 

Founded in 2009, KickassTorrents (KAT) grew out to become the largest torrent site on the Internet with millions of visitors a day.

As a result, copyright holders and law enforcement have taken aim at the site in recent years. This resulted in several ISP blockades around the world, but yesterday the big hit came when the site’s alleged founder was arrested in Poland.

 

Soon after the news was made public KAT disappeared, leaving its users without their favorite site. The question that’s on many people’s minds right now is whether the site will make a Pirate Bay-style comeback.

 

While it’s impossible to answer this question with certainty, the odds can be more carefully weighed by taking a closer look at the events that led up to the bust and what may follow.

First off, KickassTorrents is now down across all the site’s official domain names. This downtime seems to be voluntary in part, as the authorities haven’t seized the servers. Also, several domains are still in the hands of the KAT-team.

 

That said, the criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Chicago does reveal that KAT has been heavily compromised (pdf).

According to the feds, Artem Vaulin, a 30-year-old from Ukraine, is the key player behind the site. Over the years, he obfuscated his connections to the site, but several security holes eventually revealed his identity.

 

With help from several companies in the United States and abroad, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan identifies the Ukrainian as the driving force behind the site.

 

The oldest traces to Vaulin are the WHOIS records for various domains, registered in his name early 2009.

“A review of historical Whois information for KAT….identified that it was registered on or about January 19, 2009, to Artem Vaulin with an address located in Kharkiv, Ukraine,” the affidavit reads.

 

This matches with records obtained from domain registrar GoDaddy, which indicate that Vaulin purchased three KAT-related domain names around the same time.

The agent further uncovered that the alleged KAT founder used an email address with the nickname “tirm.” The same name was listed as KAT’s “owner” on the site’s “People” page in the early days, but was eventually removed in 2011.

 

Tirm on KAT’s people page
 
KATpeople

 

The HSI agent also looked at several messages posted on KAT, which suggest that “tirm” was actively involved in operating the site.

“As part of this investigation, I also reviewed historical messages posted by tirm, KAT’s purported ‘Owner.’ These postings and others indicate that tirm was actively engaged in the early running of KAT in addition to being listed as an administrator and the website’s owner,” the HSI agent writes.

 

Assisted by Apple and Facebook the feds were then able to strengthen the link between Vaulin, tirm, and his involvement in the site.

Facebook, for example, handed over IP-address logs from the KAT fanpage. With help from Apple, the investigator was then able to cross-reference this with an IP-address Vaulin used for an iTunes transaction.

 

“Records provided by Apple showed that [email protected] conducted an iTunes transaction using IP Address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The same IP Address was used on the same day to login into the KAT Facebook Account.”

 

In addition, Apple appears to have handed over private email conversations which reference KAT, dating back several years. These emails also mention a “kickasstorrent payment,” which is believed to be revenue related.

 

“I identified a number of emails in the [email protected] account relating to Vaulin’s operation of KAT. In particular, between on or about June 8, 2010, and on or about September 3, 2010,” the HSI agent writes.

 

More recent records show that an IP-address linked to KAT’s Facebook page was also used to access Vaulin’s Coinbase account, suggesting that the Bitcoin wallet also assisted in the investigation.

 

“Notably, IP address 78.108.178.77 accessed the KAT Facebook Account about a dozen times in September and October 2015. This same IP Address was used to login to Vaulin’s Coinbase account 47 times between on or about January 28, 2014, through on or about November 13, 2014.”

 

As for the business side, the complaint mentions a variety of ad payments, suggesting that KAT made over a dozen million dollars in revenue per year.

It also identifies the company Cryptoneat as KAT’s front. The Cryptoneat.com domain was registered by Vaulin and LinkedIn lists several employees of the company who were involved in the early development of the site.

 

“Many of the employees found on LinkedIn who present themselves as working for Cryptoneat are the same employees who received assignments from Vaulin in the KAT alert emails,” the complaint reads.

 

Interestingly, none of the other employees are identified or charged.

To gather further information on the money side, the feds also orchestrated an undercover operation where they posed as an advertiser. This revealed details of several bank accounts, with one receiving over $28 million in just eight months.

 

“Those records reflect that the Subject Account received a total of approximately €28,411,357 in deposits between on or about August 28, 2015, and on or about March 10, 2016.”

 

Bank account
 
bankkat

 

Finally, and crucially, the investigators issued a warrant directed at the Canadian webhost of KickassTorrents. This was one of the biggest scores as it provided them with full copies of KAT’s hard drives, including the email server.

 

“I observed […] that they were all running the same Linux Gentoo operating system, and that they contained files with user information, SSH access logs, and other information, including a file titled ‘passwd’ located in the ‘etc’ directory,” the HSI agent writes.

 

“I also located numerous files associated with KAT, including directories and logs associated to their name servers, emails and other files,” he adds.

Considering all the information U.S. law enforcement has in its possession, it’s doubtful that KAT will resume its old operation anytime soon.

 

Technically it won’t be hard to orchestrate a Pirate Bay-style comeback, as there are probably some backups available. However, now that the site has been heavily compromised and an ongoing criminal investigation is underway, it would be a risky endeavor.

 

Similarly, uploaders and users may also worry about what information the authorities have in their possession. The complaint cites private messages that were sent through KAT, suggesting that the authorities have access to a significant amount of data.

 

While regular users are unlikely to be targeted, the information may provide useful for future investigations into large-scale uploaders. More clarity on this, the site’s future, and what it means for the torrent ecosystem, is expected to become evident when the dust settles.

 

TorrentFreak.

 

 

 

 

even they follow the torrent rules they had been arrested because of their popularity

 

those government are bitter u know haha

 

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It will be interesting to see where all the torrent uploaders and whole KAT community will be moving to.

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On quinta-feira, 21 de julho de 2016 at 6:49 AM, Batu69 said:

Considering all the information U.S. law enforcement has in its possession, it’s doubtful that KAT will resume its old operation anytime soon.

The guy was an absolute imbecile. He used Facebook and Apple accounts, the latter to send the server security logs to and make money transfers, he hosted the servers in countries that are submissive to USA laws, and to cap it all he made personal purchases with the Apple account, and had them sent to his home address. He could have used any one of dozens of darknet accounts, even set up his own mail server, and made the purchases with cash deposits.

 

They say history repeats itself, but I hope the guys from Extratorrents and Rarbg don't make the same stuuupid mistakes.

 

The bottom line is he profitted very little from his business. A few million dollars a year is peanuts for a company as big as his was. You see all the headlines about the "large amounts" he made, but any medium Wall Street business probably makes more than that, and screws people over in the process.

 

KAT - R.I.P - I loved you, but your daddy was a fool.

 

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1 hour ago, Pequi said:

loved you, but your daddy was a fool.

Also you forgot the part about he flew into a country witch have a extradition treaty with the US. The Polish Police got him at the Airport. He should of stayed home were they dont have one and  he still be a free man.  :)

 

1 one rule on how to avoid being extradited to the US

Quote

 Identify countries with no extradition treaty with the U.S

 

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donkey-girl

Time to see nsane make its own private torrent site :) and hope it would be faster in what the site here loads on because its became very slow again.

 

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4 minutes ago, donkey-girl said:

Time to see nsane make its own private torrent site :)

 

I like it how it is now. ;)

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13 hours ago, DKT27 said:

It will be interesting to see where all the torrent uploaders and whole KAT community will be moving to.

Extratorrent? :D  I see some uploaders on KAT that are also on Extratorrent.

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  • Administrator
21 hours ago, ck_kent said:

Extratorrent? :D  I see some uploaders on KAT that are also on Extratorrent.

 

Quote

Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. Please contact administrator for more information.

 

For the above reason, I doubt it. :P

 

I'm hearing a lot of people talking  Rarbg.to and Torlock. As a gamer, I find both of them lacking of torrents I would like. It will be interesting to see which site gets the most visitors, who knows, people may even go back to TPB or so.

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