The oldest traces to Vaulin are the WHOIS records for various domains, registered in his name early 2009. 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. Over the years, he obfuscated his connections to the site, but several security holes eventually revealed his identity.

District Court in Chicago does reveal that KAT has been heavily compromised ( pdf).Īccording to the feds, Artem Vaulin, a 30-year-old from Ukraine, is the key player behind the site. That said, the criminal complaint filed in the U.S. Also, several domains are still in the hands of the KAT-team. This downtime seems to be voluntary in part, as the authorities haven’t seized the servers.

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.įirst off, KickassTorrents is now down across all the site’s official domain names. The question that’s on many people’s minds right now is whether the site will make a Pirate Bay-style comeback. Soon after the news was made public KAT disappeared, leaving its users without their favorite site. 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. Founded in 2009, KickassTorrents (KAT) grew out to become the largest torrent site on the Internet with millions of visitors a day.Īs a result, copyright holders and law enforcement have taken aim at the site in recent years.

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