TorrentFreak

• Ernesto
• August 26, 2012
• 300
• demonoid,
  demonoid down
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Today it’s been one month since Demonoid was driven offline by a massive DDoS attack. In the weeks that followed things went from bad to worse and the site’s Ukrainian hosting provider eventually pulled the plug on the site following a request from Mexican authorities. Despite the legal trouble, many of the site’s former users are refusing to give up hope that Demonoid will live up to its reputation as the comeback kid.

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.

The admin was referring to Demonoid’s reputation as the comeback kid, but a return became less likely during the weeks that followed. After being driven offline by a DDoS and suspected hacker attack, a few days later the news broke that Demonoid’s servers had been shutdown in the Ukraine.

The action followed a request from Interpol, who assisted Mexican authorities in their criminal investigation into the BitTorrent tracker and its operators. With the site offline, Demonoid’s millions of members could no longer access the database of nearly 400,000 torrent files.

Despite the serious legal issues, many of the site’s users haven’t given up hope that Demonoid will rise once again from its digital grave to make a blazing comeback. If it did, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Over the years Demonoid has been blighted with more than its fair share of downtime. In June 2007 the site went offline after it was pressured to leave its host in the Netherlands, mainly because of legal threats from Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

The site then relocated to Canada, but after threats from the CRIA it decided to shut down there as well. Early 2008 the site eventually reappeared in full glory after being offline for six months.

In September 2009 the site went offline again due to hardware problems and subsequent data loss. The BitTorrent tracker eventually reappeared two months later around Christmas and continued business as usual.

In the years that followed Demonoid regularly had outages of a day or two, sometimes citing DDoS attacks, but the site always reappeared.

This time the situation is different though, as the Mexican authorities are determined to keep the site offline. It was previously confirmed that a criminal investigation is underway in the country and that a number of arrests and seizures have been carried out.

These events may be the reason why many staffers decided to cut their ties with the site over the past year.

Despite the legal trouble the operator of another major BitTorrent site told TorrentFreak that he’s willing to help the tracker get back on its feet, but the Demonoid team are yet to respond to this request.

At this point it is even unknown whether the Demonoid team had backups in place to make a return possible. The decision from Demonoid’s owner to put the domain names up for sale only added to the uncertainty.

So will Demonoid be able to make a comeback? Even those who are optimistic by nature have to agree that Demonoid’s future is looking grim, but in looking to the future true Demonoid fans will never give up hope.

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...