Demonoid Busted As A Gift To The United States Government

The nightmare week for Demonoid has just reached a huge crescendo, with news coming out of Ukraine that following a massive DDoS attack the site has now been busted by local authorities. Those looking for a U.S. connection to the raid won’t be disappointed – a source in the country’s Interior Ministry says that the action was scheduled to coincide with Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky’s trip to the United States.

Last week thousands of Demonoid users feared the worst when their beloved site disappeared from the Internet. Many thought that the site had been busted, but were eventually relieved to hear that it was ‘only’ a massive DDoS attack.

But today the roller-coaster ride plummeted to new depths, with confirmation coming out of Ukraine that the DDoS was just the beginning – the site has been busted by the authorities.

ColoCall is the largest datacenter in Ukraine and a place that has been Demonoid’s home in recent years. But in the middle of last week, in the wake of the DDoS attack, government investigators arrived at ColoCall to shut Demonoid down.

“Investigators have copied all the information from the servers Demonoid and sealed them,” an anonymous ColoCall source confirmed. “Some equipment was not seized, but now it does not work, and we were forced to terminate the agreement with the site.”

As reported on TorrentFreak following our discussions with Demonoid’s admin last week, there were suspicions that the site may have been subjected to some kind of exploit or hack in addition to the DDoS. That version of events is now confirmed by the ColoCall source.

“Shortly after [the DDoS] a hacker break-in occurred, and a few days later came the investigators,” the source added.

But aside from the busting of the site, which is the biggest BitTorrent-related raid in recent memory and one that has taken out the world’s largest torrent site/tracker combo, there is a rather large international sting in the tail.

Despite general opinion that Demonoid did not contravene Ukranian law, especially since it blocked all Ukranian IP addresses to avoid upsetting the locals, the site still attracted the attention of the authorities there. That, according to a source in the country’s government, is all down to the United States getting involved.

A source inside the Interior Ministry has informed Kommersant that the raid on Demonoid was timed to coincide with the very first trip of Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky‘s trip to the United States. On the agenda: copyright infringement.

Ukraine had promised the United States that it would improve its attitude and efforts towards enforcing copyright and no doubt its Western partner will be very pleased indeed that Demonoid’s head has been presented on a platter.

But while Demonoid’s servers are in custody, the site’s admin does not appear to be. The ColoCall source would not say who is behind the site, only that its management is located in Mexico. The devil may yet be back….

TorrentFreak contacted the Demonoid admin for a comment but we have yet to hear back

Demonoid Is Back, BitTorrent Tracker is Now Online

After three and a half months of downtime Demonoid’s tracker is now back online. The unexpected revival of the tracker is the first sign of life in weeks and suggests that the Demonoid team is working to bring the full site back online. While the index and forum remain offline, the many thousands of torrents tracked by Demonoid have been brought back to life.

When Demonoid went down at the end of July the site’s admin blamed a DDoS attack. This initial attack resulted in a series of problems that were not easy to fix.

However, at the time the tech admin of the site was determined to get the site back online.

“You know how it goes with Demonoid. It might take a while but it will come back,” the admin told us.

This was easier said than done though, and things went from bad to worse when Demonoid’s hosting provider Colocall pulled the plug following pressure from Interpol. But despite the site’s entanglement in a criminal investigation, Demonoid’s users never gave up hope that the site would return.

Today, this hope appears to be justified as the first step towards a comeback was been made. A few hours ago Demonoid’s tracker was kicked back into action.

Demonoid’s tracker is working



It may not come as a surprise that Demonoid is no longer with its former hosting company in the Ukraine. It appears that they have moved to Hong Kong instead, judging from the IP-address linked to the tracker.

While the news of the revived tracker will delight many Demonoid users, it may take some time before the site itself returns, if that’s the plan. In 2007 and 2009 Demonoid suffered similar downtime episodes and at the time the tracker reappeared several weeks before the site.

When the DDoS hit Demonoid late July the site also suffered from an “exploit of sorts” which caused some damage. It is unclear whether this has been resolved at this point. The admin told us at the time that if the site did indeed return, it might move over to the new code they had been testing for a while.

Time will tell if that’s indeed the case.

TorrentFreak has asked Demonoid’s tech admin for a comment on the tracker comeback and the possible return of the website, and we’ll update this article once we receive a response.