Can KickassTorrents Make a Comeback?

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. kickasstorrents_500x500Founded 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. 

Full Article - https://torrentfreak.com/can-kickasstorrents-make-a-comeback-160721/