Scammers Take Over Popular KickassTorrents ‘Mirror’

[Ernesto]

After losing two of the largest torrent sites, KickassTorrents and Torrentz.eu, there’s a lot of uncertainty and doubt in the torrent community.

Many people are looking for alternatives to their favorite sites and a natural response is to look for mirrors.

KAT.am was one of the first sites to present itself as a replacement. While it misleadingly claimed to have a copy of KAT’s database, a flurry of news reports helped the site to gain traction.

This ended abruptly last week. The mirror’s domain name was suspended after a complaint from the Motion Picture Association, forcing the operators to move elsewhere.

However, for the past few days KAT.am has been back in action. At first glance it appears to be a fully working mirror, but people who try to download something will be prompted to register a ‘free’ account.

“Free Account Required. You must create a Free Account to access KickassTorrents,” the popup notification reads.

The signup page redirects to a scammy portal, and requires people to enter their credit card details if they want a free trial.

Needless to say, this has nothing to do with the original KickassTorrents site, and has all the signs of a classic pay to download scam, which usually ends in disappointment for those who sign up.

So how can it be that scammers managed to get hold of the popular domain?

Well, as it turns out the .AM domain registry simply made the domain available for registration again after it was suspended. This allowed the scammers to pick it up, and link it to their KickassTorrents ripoff.

The “register to download” mirror scam isn’t anything new. Several other “mirrors” employ the same tactics and have been doing so for years. However, with the current confusion created by KickassTorrents’ demise, they can do a lot more damage now.

For this reason, we can probably expect many more scammy sites to appear during the days and weeks to come.

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



Originally Published: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 21:37:59 +0000
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[Sid]

This is a classic example of why I don't like lookalike sites.

Even if they start off innocent, with up to date content and no malware or other crap, once they have established themselves and built up their reputation and userbase they can and often do switch to a more "profitable" model. They suck some people in immediately and others continue to defend the site long after the fact because they remember using it and it was fine.

[Stuum]

This is a classic example of why I don't like lookalike sites.

Even if they start off innocent, with up to date content and no malware or other crap, once they have established themselves and built up their reputation and userbase they can and often do switch to a more "profitable" model. They suck some people in immediately and others continue to defend the site long after the fact because they remember using it and it was fine.

I agree. This is one of the problems with the Hydra model-trust. Trust is a difficult problem in distributed and anonymous systems. Every day you see on Reddit people asking "is this site safe?" TPB could actually address this with their own multiple hydra addresses just by signing each web page. Maybe even a QR code that an app can verify. It's not hard.

Clone sites are a lot harder since a new site starts with zero trust and should accumulate a reputation over time. By then it is too late for some and the next scam has been born. That can be alleviated with an API back to the originating site to get a signature to say "Yes. These guys are good guys" (3rd party trust) but in a world where noone knows each other there is no good decentralized trust method that I know of. I'd like to hear of any that solve this problem-it's a very hard one.

[Itanium2]

Oh, i bet some geniuses fell for the oldest trick in the book.

[Picklock]

because for some "not very avid" Internet user(s), the so called "oldest trick in the book" is very something like an advanced Xeno's Hyper Technology..
i.e. I can't believe that Humans actually have the technologies so advanced that will made lots of peoples lost some of their cognitive functions of their Brain cells...and I discovered...Pokemon Go..

it's must be an Alien technology!
I'm sure of it!