Feds Seize KickassTorrents Domains, Arrest Owner

[Sid]

EDIT: Oh, we need a "Thanks" button?

Nope.

Different philosophies at work here again.

I write what I write because I want to share whatever it is I want to share, not because I'm looking for approbation.

If, after the fact, you're grateful (or think I'm a tosser) that doesn't really concern me. [And my thoughts on your contributions shouldn't concern you either.]

Share your thoughts/torrents/whatever for the simple sake of sharing.

[Sid]

Received from a trusted source:

KAT has not officially returned and we're not sure if it will. We were noticing that in general it's the thread community that our users are missing. So us KAT Crew have revived a thread only site, with many of the old threads duplicated. All starting from scratch of course...

https://katcr.co/community/ .. Make sure to use your former name from KAT... accounts will be approved by admins .. if anyone gets caught trying to "jump over the fence" there is no appeal system guys ... also make sure to register with a dummy email, we don't want your data .... be safe .... Love and peace

It has been reported that it is best to wait for a while before trying to log in, you do not always get an email confirmation.

[Ernesto]

To the huge disappointment of millions of BitTorrent users, KickassTorrents disappeared this week following an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security in the United States.

With a huge hole now present at the top of the torrent landscape, other sites plus interested groups and individuals will be considering their options. Step up their game and take over the top slot? Cautiously maintain the status quo? Or pull out altogether…

Make no mistake, this is a game of great reward, matched only by the risk. If the DHS complaint is to be believed, Kickass made dozens of millions of euros, enough to tempt even the nerviest of individuals. But while that might attract some, is avoiding detection almost impossible these days?

The complaint against KAT shows that while not inevitable, it’s becoming increasingly difficult. It also shows that carelessness plays a huge part in undermining security and that mistakes made by others in the past are always worth paying attention to.

Servers in the United States

Perhaps most tellingly, in the first instance KAT failed to learn from the ‘mistakes’ made by Megaupload. While the cases are somewhat dissimilar, both entities chose to have a US presence for at least some of their servers. This allowed US authorities to get involved. Not a great start.

“[Since 2008], KAT has relied on a network of computer servers around the world to operate, including computer servers located in Chicago, Illinois,” the complaint against the site reads.

The Chicago server weren’t trivial either.

“According to a reverse DNS search conducted by the hosting company on or about May 5, 2015, that server was the mail client ‘mail.kat.ph’.”

Torrent site mail servers. In the United States. What could go possibly go wrong?

In a word? Everything. In January 2016, DHS obtained a search warrant and cloned the Chicago servers. Somewhat unsurprisingly this gifted investigating agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan (the same guy who infiltrated Silk Road) valuable information.

“I located multiple files that contained unique user information, access logs, and other information. These files include a file titled ‘passwd’ located in the ‘etc’ directory, which was last accessed on or about January 13, 2016, and which identified the users who had access to the operating system,” Der-Yeghiayan said.

Servers in Canada

KAT also ran several servers hosted with Montreal-based Netelligent Hosting Services. There too, KAT was vulnerable.

In response to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request, in April 2016 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police obtained business records associated with KAT’s account and made forensic images of the torrent site’s hard drives.

Why KAT chose Netelligent isn’t clear, but the site should have been aware that the hosting company would be forced to comply with law enforcement requests. After all, it had happened at least once before in a case involving Swedish torrent site, Sparvar.

Mistakes at the beginning

When pirate sites first launch, few admins expect them to become world leaders. If they did, they’d probably approach things a little differently at the start. In KAT’s case, alleged founder Artem Vaulin registered several of the site’s domains in his own name, information that was happily handed to the DHS by US-based hosting company GoDaddy.

Vaulin also used a Gmail account, operated by US-based Google. The complaint doesn’t explicitly say that Google handed over information, but it’s a distinct possibility. In any event, an email sent from that account in 2009 provided a helpful bridge to investigators.

“I changed my gmail. now it’s [email protected],” it read.

Forging further connections from his private email accounts to those operated from KAT, in 2012 Vaulin sent ‘test’ emails from KAT email addresses to his Apple address. This, HSI said, signaled the point that Vaulin began using KAT emails for business.

No time to relax, even socially

In addition to using an email account operated by US-based Apple, (in which HSI found Vaulin’s passport and driver’s license details, plus his banking info), the Ukranian also had an iTunes account.

Purchases he made there were logged by Apple, down to the IP address. Then, thanks to information provided by US-based Facebook (notice the recurring Stateside theme?), HSI were able to match that same IP address against a login to KAT’s Facebook page.

Anonymous Bitcoin – not quite

If the irony of the legitimate iTunes purchases didn’t quite hit the spot, the notion that Bitcoin could land someone in trouble should tick all the boxes. According to the complaint, US-based Bitcoin exchange Coinbase handed over information on Vaulin’s business to HSI.

“Records received from the bitcoin exchange company Coinbase revealed that the KAT Bitcoin Donation Address sent bitcoins it received to a user’s account maintained at Coinbase. This account was identified as belonging to Artem Vaulin located in Kharkov, Ukraine,” it reads.

Final thoughts

For a site that the US Government had always insisted was operating overseas, KickassTorrents clearly had a huge number of United States connections. This appears to have made the investigation much more simple than it would have been had the site and its owner had maintained a presence solely in Eastern Europe.

Why the site chose to maintain these connections despite the risks might never be answered, but history has shown us time and again that US-based sites are not only vulnerable but also open to the wrath of the US Government. With decades of prison time at stake, that is clearly bad news.

But for now at least, Vaulin is being detained in Poland, waiting to hear of his fate. Whether or not he’ll quickly be sent to the United States is unclear, but it seems unlikely that a massively prolonged Kim Dotcom-style extradition battle is on the agenda. A smaller one might be, however.

While the shutdown of KAT and the arrest of its owner came out of the blue, the writing has always been on the wall. The shutdown is just one of several momentous ‘pirate’ events in the past 18 months including the closure (and resurrection) of The Pirate Bay, the dismantling of the main Popcorn Time fork, and the end of YTS/YIFY.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.



Originally Published: Sat, 23 Jul 2016 09:20:27 +0000
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[Ernesto]

With millions of unique visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) was the largest file-sharing site in the world.

In fact, shortly before the site went offline it was the 69th most-visited site on the entire Internet, beating Craigslist, Alibaba and the BBC.

Today, however, the site is still offline and there haven’t been any signs of an imminent comeback. This means that KAT’s millions of users have to find a new home to get their daily torrent fix.

The Pirate Bay appears to be one of the prime alternatives. The notorious torrent site has been operating steadily recently, aside from some occasional downtime, and is still seen by many as the Godfather of all torrent sites.

At the end of 2014 many Pirate Bay users moved to KAT, when the site suffered more than a month of downtime. To get the latest torrents and discuss the latest developments, among other things. Now many KAT users are likely to switch in the other direction.

TorrentFreak spoke with TPB staff member Spud17, who has seen some increase in forum traffic in recent days. She says they will welcome homeless torrenters with open arms.

“When both TPB and its forum went down, we had overwhelming support from KAT users on their forum, and our staff were able to keep the communities updated on important news and announcements thanks to the help and messages of support we received.

“Reciprocation is only right and we hope KAT staff will keep us informed of any official news/announcements so that we can help to inform,” Spud17 adds.

As for the future, the TPB staffer believes that the KAT community is strong enough to survive one way or another.

“Personally, I think KAT will be back, their community is too strong to just fizzle out, much like the TPB community seeking refuge on IRC meant it stayed together during downtime, I’m sure the KAT community will keep the faith,” Spud17 notes.

Another refuge for KAT users is ExtraTorrent, which was already the third largest torrent site before the KAT takedown. TorrentFreak spoke to an operator of the site who said that they’re seeing a significant traffic spike.

“So far we got 200% signup, and 300% traffic increase at ExtraTorrent,” ET’s SaM told us a day after KAT went down.

Similar to KAT, ExtraTorrent has an active community and forums, which makes it one of the most natural alternatives.

Despite the traffic boost, ExtraTorrent’s operator is not happy to see another site going down. However, he is not willing to throw in the towel and believes that the “torrent community” will survive this setback.

“It is sad to see an iconic site go this way, and it shows how the torrent community is targeted by all means. But, I guess torrenting will prevail and this doesn’t mean the death or end of this era,” SaM says.

Another operator of one of the top torrent sites, who spoke with us on condition of anonymity, reports a traffic increase as well, albeit a small one. The site in question targets a different audience, which may explain the limited effect.

“We’re seeing a small traffic increase, but then again we were never the KAT type of site. So KAT’s users will not move to us,” the operator says.

Despite from the traffic spikes, some torrent sites were adversely affected this week. The popular torrent caching service Torcache.net went offline at the same time KAT did, which is likely related.

As a result, torrents on 1337x.to, Monova and other sites that use the same service are not loading at the moment. Time will tell if and how these events are connected.

It is safe to say, however, that the KAT downtime has had a significant effect on the torrent community. But as history has shown time and time again, it’s doubtful that it will stop many people from sharing files in the long run.

Originally Published: Sun, 24 Jul 2016
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[Ernesto]

With an active community and millions of regular visitors, KickassTorrents was much more than a site to leech the latest torrents from. Many considered it to be their virtual home.

This ended abruptly last week, following the arrest of its alleged founder in Poland. A criminal complaint from the U.S. Government revealed that the entire operation had been compromised by the Department of Homeland Security.

Although not all domain names and servers were seized, the site quickly disappeared and after nearly a week there is still no sign of life. At least, not at the original site.

Over the past few days, several members of the KAT team have regrouped in an effort to get the community part of the site back up. Since then they have launched Katcr.co, which hosts a forum where several staffers are present.

Speaking on behalf of the KAT-team that’s left, Mr.Black says that the criminal investigation won’t be the end of the community.

“We need to remember that Kickass Torrents is not simply about uploading, the heart and soul of KAT is our members, which are family and family is important as we all know. Nothing can ever take that away and no matter what happens we will not let our community down.”

“We guarantee that KAT will continue in one form or another and we will come back stronger than ever,” Mr.Black adds.

The forum, created by Mr.Prairi3DoG, has already gathered thousands of visitors over the past few days and continues to grow. While many of the original team members are present, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the original site will be restored as well.

KAT forum

TorrentFreak has learned that remaining “KAT team” doesn’t have access to the original code. They are mainly people who kept the site clean and in order, in the role of moderator or administrator, and who have no contact with the alleged site owner.

However, if the “owners” of the site would like to make a comeback, they will have the support of the KAT team that’s now trying to keep the community alive.

“Should the business owners choose to revive KAT then they will have our full support,” Mr.Black says.

He further notes that the site was taken down “under dubious circumstances” and calls the charges against the alleged operator “murky” at best. “No copyrighted material was ever stored on Kickass Torrents and the site was fully DMCA compliant,” Mr.Black says.

KAT spirit is still alive

For now, the forum will give estranged KAT users a place to get together once again. However, many are also still looking for alternatives, with various KAT mirrors growing in popularity.

The KAT team has noticed this as well, but warns that none of these are connected to the old team, urging people to proceed with caution.

“Please be aware that there is no legitimate fully-working KAT site available so be cautious and never attempt to login to any fake sites that may appear online,” Mr.Black warns.

Meanwhile, the alleged operator of KickassTorrents faces extradition to the United States. As far as we know he still remains in Poland, but the authorities haven’t announced any new information since last week, while the court case remains sealed.

Originally Published: Mon, 25 Jul 2016
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[BillForbes]

I hope KAT team will get up again and restore their site

---

And the www.katcr.com/community is down

[Mad_Murphy]

I hope KAT team will get up again and restore their site

---

And the www.katcr.com/community is down

It's not down, you have the website wrong. It's .co, not .com: https://katcr.co/community/

[LooneyTunerIan]

Ahoy, me hearties!

I used to be on KAT until it got shut down.

The Pirate Bay is my last resort for requesting torrents.

[Ernesto]

Last month, Polish law enforcement officers arrested Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents, who’s been held in a local prison since.

Polish authorities acted on a criminal complaint from the U.S. Government which contained several damning allegations.

This week, the Department of Justice (DoJ) followed up the complaint with a full grand jury indictment, which presents several new allegations.

In addition to Vaulin, it charges two other defendants, Ievgen Kutsenko and Oleksandr Radostin. The three men, all from Ukraine, are charged with several counts of copyright infringement and money laundering.

“Kickass Torrents, or ‘KAT,’ was a commercial website that facilitated and promoted the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content over the Internet without authorization of the copyright owners,” the DoJ writes.

KAT’s seizure banner

According to the indictment, the ‘KAT conspiracy’ involved a variety of piracy-related websites. It mentions that the torrent storage service Torcache.net, which went offline together with KAT, was operated by the same people.

In addition, the defendants were involved in a variety of direct download sites where users could download or stream copyright-infringing content, sometimes in exchange for payments.

These sites include the popular streaming portal Solarmovie, which disappeared last month, as well as the defunct torrent leeching service Leechmonster.

“Leechmonster.com, rolly.com, solarmovie.com, solarmovie.ph, iwatchfilm.com, movie2b.com, hippomovies.com, bino.tv, and moviepro.net were commercial websites that enabled registered users to download or stream copyrighted movies and other media directly from the website,” the indictment reads.

According to the U.S. Government, the three men used the sites to generate millions of dollars in revenue.

“…defendants […] and others designed, developed, and operated KAT, torcache.net, and the direct download websites in order to encourage, induce, facilitate, engage in, and generate millions of dollars from the unlawful reproduction and distribution of copyright-protected media,” the indictment states.

The authorities describe KickassTorrents as a site that was developed purposefully to facilitate copyright infringements. Among other things, this included the sorting of torrents by genre, so they would be easier to find.

In addition, the defendants are also accused of developing a BitTorrent client to facilitate piracy, and of operating the subtitle repository Subtitlesource.com.

On the money laundering side, the indictment includes various examples of advertising payments that were made to bank accounts that were operated by the defendants. This includes a payment from an undercover IRS investigator, who posed as an advertiser.

The Department of Justice has yet to comment on the indictment and it’s currently unknown where the two additional defendants reside and if they have been arrested. The court record shows that two warrants were submitted yesterday, but these remain sealed for now.

Meanwhile, Artem Vaulin is still being held in a Polish prison, awaiting his extradition process.

His lawyer previously asked the Department of Justice to release his client. The defense argued that Vaulin can’t be held responsible for the potentially infringing actions of the KAT’s users, since criminal secondary or indirect copyright infringement does not exist under U.S. law.

—

A copy of the full indictment obtained by TorrentFreak is available here.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.



Originally Published: Thu, 25 Aug 2016 09:37:17 +0000
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[Sid]

In addition, the defendants are also accused of developing a BitTorrent client...

Anyone know what client?