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KickassTorrents resurfaces online

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Re: KickassTorrents resurfaces online

#51

Post by Nagyman »

petra wrote: post #38
csydas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treaties. The nebulous amount of treaties across the world, specifically with the US can make it incredibly easy for just about anyone to be subject to its jurisdiction in some manner. As long as the US is politically active and persuasive enough to get foreign governments into these agreements, their reach will extend very far. As an aside, it's part of why Britain's EU Exit is such a mess; all the treaties and agre…

>> Attacking torrent sources isn't about recouping loss from piracy Actually it's part of the battle preventing something extremly easy like popcorn time becoming great, easy, and safe - because if that happens, the media industry will be in big trouble.

The current spat of cheap Android boxes preloaded with Kodi (which itself isn't an issue) and all of the third-party stream-torrenting plugins (the real issue), are posing enough of a threat for big Canadian telcoms to go after them here. They're too easy to use, not to mention stream a lot of sports which is the last bastion for many cable companies to hold onto subscribers.

Re: KickassTorrents resurfaces online

#52

Post by anexprogrammer »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #32
AnbeSivam wrote: post #13

> hosting information is well hidden behind Cloudflare Anyone facing issues with Cloudflare's captcha. Not just for this site, I have faced this issue with other sites too. Only around 50% of the time I am able to get past their captcha, most other times I just get frustrated and close the page.

Where are you from? I keep hearing that people get captchas but I wonder what triggers it. I have only seen it from a Russian hotel IP so far.

I use a popular VPN when out and about with the laptop. Even with a UK connection I get Cloudflare captchas probably 75% of the time on VPN.

Not only does it trigger a captcha but a site that does so, if you're browsing a while, usually triggers another in 20-30 minutes. They don;t cookie the browser in any way, so if I happen to be browsing HN and go to 4 or 5 different Cloudflare links I get 4 or 5 captchas. Each with 20-30 minute refresh timeouts ticking.

Mostly these days, unless it's a rare site that's worth the hassle, I close the tab rather than faff ticking boxes identifying road signs.

So from this data point of one, Cloudflare costs sites traffic.

Re: KickassTorrents resurfaces online

#53

Post by forgotpwtomain »

daurnimator wrote: post #47
forgotpwtomain wrote: post #35

I'm not a fan of US copyright law to say the least, but it's hard to feel any sympathy for these sites or their creators. Mostly they have derived multi-million dollar incomes from selling very shaddy adware or otherwise space for virus infested adds which they show to the users, 95% of who are there to download pirated content. This is probably an unpopular opinion here.

I recall seeing figures for other sites and they weren't making millions. Infact they were barely scraping by. These sites seem to be run by idealistic individuals, rather than as a profit making enterprise.

> These sites seem to be run by idealistic individuals, rather than as a profit making enterprise.

You really think people advertising adaware 'Improve PC performance now' and 'watch XXX live with donkeys' are idealistic individuals fighting draconian copyright laws?

Also I don't know about kickass - but for example the /scrape endpoint is blocked on the piratebay tracker (and most other 'commercial' trackers) -- meaning that you can't get basic statistics (like leechers/seeders) about a torrent which is tracked by them without going through their advertisements.

Re: KickassTorrents resurfaces online

#54

Post by kilroy123 »

Vexs wrote: post #11

In a similar vein, I've seen a lot of push in some communities to move to a zeronet-based torrent site.

That's really the only solution. A decentralized torrent site, that only hosts names and magnet links.

However, there needs to be some kind of control built in. That way there isn't spam and abuse. Not sure how you would accomplish this.

Then there would be another weak link that authorities would likely target - trackers and servers running trackers.

Re: KickassTorrents resurfaces online

#55

Post by chippy »

janitor61 wrote: post #21

Why do people assume these sites are honeypots? Would there be a point to the FBI operating a torrent site? I thought copyright violations were handled at the ISP level.

> Would there be a point to the FBI operating a torrent site?

Possibly for the same reason they end up operating other sites such as illegal pornography sites.

But why do they do that? Because these sites have users who sign in and upload things. In this case, they could have access to the releasers account details. usernames, emails, passwords. It's generally the releasers that are the same people or groups that do the ripping, who may have relationships with studios, networks, cinemas etc. Nothing major but it's a bit better than not having them.

Also, if a third party controls a server, they can, as Snowden has repeatedly shown, target specific users with malicious payloads. Even if they are using HTTPS.

Re: KickassTorrents resurfaces online

#56

Post by kilroy123 »

This feels very similar to the war on drugs. Take down one site, two more appear the next day. Take down a domain name, it moves to another hours later. This will never stop.

Eventually, I predict there will be a decentralized torrent site. Using magnet links and just file names. Nothing hosted anywhere. More and more questionable VPNs will appear for people to use and hide with.

I'm not advocating for piracy, I'm just saying there will be no stopping it.

Re: KickassTorrents resurfaces online

#57

Post by chippy »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #49
nxzero wrote: post #10

Any reason to believe this isn't a passive attack; aka: honeypot, watering-hole, etc.

Why would they need to do this for a honeypot? Visiting a torrent website is not illegal. You /can/ download Linux ISOs from them. The government could just upload a torrent and watch the connected IP list. Actually, they don't even need to upload a torrent. Just get a torrent and see who you connect to. Anyone you connect to is uploading that content.

Operating a site gives more than just IPs. 1) To add a torrent to a torrent site, a user has to set up an account - they get access to account information and 2) even if the site is serving things via https, they control it, and can send a malicious ad or inject some JS in the page to a targeted user.

Re: KickassTorrents resurfaces online

#58

Post by chippy »

AnkhMorporkian wrote: post #34
sergiotapia wrote: post #17

All of these are honeypots.

What's the point of a torrent honeypot? It's incredibly trivial to track which IPs are downloading a torrent; operating the site which offers magnet links gives you no additional information whatsoever.

The website that users can log into, get JS to run on their computers and get targets ads. Thats the benefit of a honeypot, not torrents.

Re: KickassTorrents resurfaces online

#59

Post by jeeceebees »

drops wrote: post #3

Is there a possibility of someone actually making a stable, long-term KAT mirror / follow-up without getting busted like the original one?

The future is an IPFS mirror where the entire magnet list and web frontend are peer to peer. When everyone can host the site individually on their own computer there won't be a way for authorities to seize servers or domains.

Re: KickassTorrents resurfaces online

#60

Post by AnkhMorporkian »

chippy wrote: post #58
AnkhMorporkian wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of a torrent honeypot? It's incredibly trivial to track which IPs are downloading a torrent; operating the site which offers magnet links gives you no additional information whatsoever.

The website that users can log into, get JS to run on their computers and get targets ads. Thats the benefit of a honeypot, not torrents.

Well that's just a scam. A honeypot, at least in common parlance on this site, refers to getting a specific group of people to run/interact with something in the interests of compromising their identity and/or blackmailing them. What you're describing is pretty much just the MO of shady torrent sites.
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