TorrentFreak

The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide

Mega Goes Down As 250,000 Users Sign Up

megaEarlier today Kim Dotcom and his team decided to open up Mega to the public.

Soon after the announcement thousands of people registered an account, every minute.

“I have never seen anything like this. From 0 to 10 Gigabit bandwidth utilization within 10 minutes,” Dotcom wrote in a tweet.

A few hours later Mega’s user count hit 250,000.

Unfortunately, the site’s servers can’t keep up with the demand and Mega is suffering frequent downtime.

mega-frenzy

Kim Dotcom doesn’t appear to be worried and says things should be fine after the initial frenzy is over.

“The guys are working on balancing the load,” Dotcom says.

In a few hours Mega will launch officially with a Mega press conference. Perhaps we’ll hear more about Megamovie as well then ;)

Update: Here’s our coverage on unprecedented Mega launch.

This post is from the News Bits section of TorrentFreak where we present stories from around the web in a concise summary format. Full TorrentFreak articles can be found here. If you have a tip please let us know. News Bits have their very own RSS feed
  • McCheezits

    The rush of traffic to Mega.co.nz reminds me of what happens every year to one of the NZ Government’s websites. Exam results are released, and the server reaches full capacity in a few minutes, essentially DDoSing everyone.

    inb4 sheep

    • Anonymous

      DDoSing “everyone”? You mean DDoSing the exam results’ server(s).

      • think it’s a minor error

        think it was just an accidental typo. looks llike it.

        DDoSing everyone.
        flip
        everyone DDoSing.

        • Guest

          Am I the only one that tried to access the website multiple times without any luck?

        • Guest

          @Guest

          Cookies must be enabled to load the website (even though the site doesn’t set cookie in frontpage).

    • Guest
  • http://twitter.com/oObsi Henry B.

    Some people pointed out that they use a SSL key with only 1024bit strength for their distribution of the javascript code.
    ==> It’s quite feasible to crack/intercept/spoof your client code and get a hold of your key data..

    • Guest

      It is 2048 bit though the key (unless you using some browsers which can’t support that though they should just say upgrade your browser etc, well that be the most suitable thing than it downgrading the security.) Which is found for now unless someone has crack a 2048 RSA though they could have ciphers + algorithms else where. The only downside will be the cipher they are using which is ARC4 as the name implies it is alleged RC4 though they haven’t stated it is RC4 it is confirmed to be genuine to the proprietary RC4 but nobody from RSA security has never officially released but RC/ARC4 anyway has a few weakness if not correctly implemented.

      • Lolcakes

        Comodo CA, nice choice Kim.

        If he had really thought about it he could of created his own CA first ;)

        We all remember the Comodo Hacker don’t we? http://pastebin.com/74KXCaEZ

        Mega is a big painted target with the words ATTACK ME written all over it. And as the attacks will most likely stem from the US government I would say that Comodo Certificate is worthless. Encrypt your data yourself don’t rely on Mega’s encryption.

        • Paruhang Chamling

          I read the ComodoHacker’s text. Sounds like a school kid to me. Someone with a lot of time but not much skills.

    • bno112300

      If you were relying solely on your MEGA private key for identity, you really don’t care about security. Sure, people can pretend to have your account, but it’s not that helpful to anyone trying to stop piracy.

      Malware would be a more efficient way to get the keys though. Link through a “VPN program” from the ISP which puts a man in the browser.

  • TheAnon1337minus1

    So that’s why I couldn’t go and register myself!

  • dondilly

    I think many will sign up for paid accounts as a means of showing support and contributing to the legal fund to help stick it to the feds and the MAFIAA.

    • Chuck

      already have :)

    • andrepd

      You’re seriously suggesting we give our money to this guy? What on earth makes you be so blind??

      MAFIAA and similar associations are scum, but Kim Dotcom almost beats them. A self grandiose lardass who made all his money ever through insider trading, selling material he didn’t own, and all manners of illegal and immoral methods. *AND* he fucking ratted out partner associations to the feds in exchange for a lighter sentence. That’s how much he cares about your freedom.

      I don’t see Frederik Niej in a 25,000,000$ mansion in NZ. The difference between ThePirateBay and Mega- is that TPB is a nonprofit association who doesn’t profit form people getting material not owned by them. KimDotcom made hundereds of millions from that same thing. And he ratted out his fellow “freedom fighters” at the first sign of trouble.

      Hollywood and MAFIAA and these lobby industries are trash, but that doesn’t make it fine to sell copyrighted material that you don’t own FOR YOUR OWN PROFIT, without giving compensations to the artists. It is acceptable if, like TPB, you don’t profit from it. If you make millions out of it, you deserve to go to jail.

      TL;DR: You’re mad, blind sheep if you give a penny to Kim Dotcom.

      • http://www.revs.org/ Matt Williams

        [Confession Bear meme] – I think that people who try to rally support against Kim Dotcom by bringing up the subject of how much he weighs have opinions that are not worth listening to.

        • reverbe

          Awesome comment :]

        • Liam Jh

          I agree – the fact he is an ugly fat cnut has nothing to do with this.

      • Zookeeper216

        Compensations to the artists..lol. They don’t see a penny.

  • Steven

    Not a single thing on the site works.. I got registered luckily but many are reporting they can’t and been trying to upload a single picture since it launched 5 and a half hours ago but still hasn’t uploaded.

    Seems Kim COMPLETELY forgot how to manage traffic and he is only getting probably 1/1000th of megaupload

    • Mouseanony

      Megaupload was progressively built. I’m sure no one expected 250k signups in a few hours. Give them some time, they’ll feed more servers to their “cloud” and things will come back up.

      • DezD

        Yes, people cannot use their common sense in this, they’re expecting magic,
        I can understand that, though.

        • ScrewEwe2

          This requires Mega Patience. If at first you haven’t succeeded, it’s because the server capabilities have likely been exceeded. I’m going to wait a few day’s to check it out.

        • Darkhog

          ScrewEwe2, I agree. However using Windows for years (since 95, was 5yr at the time) made me have all patience needed. If I only knew about Linux at the time :(…

      • Andrew me

        up to 500 000 sign ups now, dont expect it to be working for a few days until the hype slows down a bit and people stop experimenting all at the same time.I wonder if it will break the 1 million barrier by the middle of the week.

    • http://twitter.com/zackeryfretty Zackery Fretty

      As someone who works on a web team I can tell you that it would be damn near impossible to simulate 250K people generating encryption keys and uploading GB of data from all around the world in QA.

      I’m surprised the site is up at all right now, that’s impressive.

      • Steven

        it’s not actually up at all on my remote desktop and after 7 hours and a 50kb picture still hasn’t uploaded.. I’d say the site isn’t really “up” . But I do think thats the killer of the server is the encryption key generation and the fact that Mega only has 1 10gbit connection which a smaller site with only thousands of users have. Nevermind millions they are getting.

        But I’ll give it 24-48 hours to get over the growing pains

        • Thegrul2

          Dude, the encryption key is made in your browser.

  • http://modmyi.com/forums/iphone-4-new-skins-themes-launches/740147-neurotech-hd.html#post5637502 Jay

    Some say Dotcom is just really good at hype, but you have to figure that no one would care if the government didn’t bust down his door and harass him unlawfully.

    The Pirate Bay has done similarly well – the more the authorities try to bring them down, the more famous they become.

    There’s a lesson to learn here somewhere.

    • Jason

      It’s a variant of the Barbara Streisand Effect…maybe we could call it the Pirate Bay Corollary?

    • Who

      also ….as read in MEGA’s privacy policy.

      “Your data is encrypted by you”

      didn’t he say that HE was gona provide this as part of HIS new service?

      hype’s the idea of encryption and then says its up to you before you upload to the service.

  • 123

    Long live DotCom . F#ck the police

  • sandyaj

    has anyone succeeded in actually uploading anything? i made an account and signed in but cant seem to be able to get an upload to complete even a 55k jpg file xp

    • Chris

      Nope. I was one of the first thousand people to sign up (like… 1 minute after Kim tweeted its out), and I tried to upload a 700mb movie but it couldn’t get past 0%. But for the first few minutes I was getting 10-20kb/s upload speed so if I uploaded a 55k jpg file then, I probably would’ve been able to upload it.

      • Andrew me

        Probably not going to work very well until the hundreds of thousands of people stop trying to upload files at the same time. I am sure in a few days this will be working smoothly. It looks very very easy to use.

  • Sdan

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Wvn-9BXVc

    lets listen to the mega upload song!

  • John Doe

    Sadly this is probably going to be a haven for paedophiles, with encryption in place like that, how can they be caught. Hopefully Dotcom will have some filters in place that deals with this problem.

    • Rui Fung Yip

      And what is stopping people from encrypting their files before uploading it to any other file hosting site?

    • Guest

      Shut up you cretin. Where did paedophiles go before this? Do you seriously think they didn’t encrypt them before Mega? Kim didn’t invent encryption.

      Troll a lot?

    • Whatever

      You must be MAFIAA to come up with that argument again.

      @ “with encryption” & “some filters”

      Clueless ?

    • Andrew me

      Sadly the MAFFIA have forced this to happen, if anything they are the ones forcing people to do whatever they can to store their content securely, if it was not for them suing and closing down sites illegally then this form of encryption would not be needed, all they had to do was abide by the law and not try to shut down sites that were offering a service, I blame them for doing this nobody else, Kim Dotcom is offering a service that more and more people are demanding, it is not his fault that this is the case.

  • Boobs

    Was at 12:03-12:09am EST… and couldn’t upload anything after that, and nothing seems to work again.

  • RaaV

    Everything is there Except the PassworD reset OptioN..;)

  • http://nejtillpirater.wordpress.com/ Nejtillpirater

    1. Mega is completely useless at the moment (have tried it, nothing is uploaded)”
    2. Mega is not for pirates. According to the Terms of Service, “What you can’t do”:

    17.3 infringe anyone else’s intellectual property (including but not limited to copyright) or other rights in any material.
    17.5.1 to store, use, download, upload or otherwise transmit, data in violation of any law (including to breach copyright or other intellectual property held by us or anyone else);

    • Guest

      Neither is any other site, tool or client.
      Pogue mahone, Nej.

      • translator_Dude

        pogue mahon = Kiss my arse :0

        • Guest

          It’s actually Póg mo thóin.

    • Ptmoonlight

      Mega is at moment***Good for Nothing*** .To upload my own files I do prefer a local HD , connect to my router/lan-on my “home-made cloud”. So was Filesonic lately. I bought a “time-for-life” account with them and now they even don’t exist anymore.Lost my money.Mega-> Just My Two Cents.

    • Whatever

      I wonder why you would ever try to use a site from someone you and your accomplices consider a criminal and want to see in jail and the site shutdown.

      No opportunity for hypocrisy is wasted by the MAFIAA trolls.

    • Anyone

      they say that crap on all sites

      the important thing is if Kim has learned not to enforce that bullshit, because the MAFIAA cannot be reasoned with

  • Ramboslanina

    this is MEGA FAIL its only works with Google Chrome and uploading pending forewer,
    Price are rip off its a another crapy filehost, in the same price to pro 1 i got unlimited space on RapidShare, Kim wants to earn big money faster then anyone,Restricting people to download only via Chrome, what kind of bullshit is this?

    • frozar

      Worked just fine on my Firefox. There is a pushy ad after registering but that’s it. There’s no restriction that I am aware of.

    • cryptochrome

      Oh how I wish people would make more educated comments.

      • https://plus.google.com/111682818223525948069/posts Muntoo Meddler

        Sadly, there is no way of distinguishing between monkeys on keyboards and the average human on the internet anymore.

        “CANZZ I HAAZZ CHEEEZBURGERSZZZZ@@@!!! hahahahaha LOL”

        Posted by a human or a monkey? You shall never know…

  • Gee

    Uploading worked flawlessly for me, but so far I have been unable to download anything.

    P.S. Nej, Fuck Off.

  • Guest

    I am just curious.. As I paid for Lifetime on Megaupload, to Use the service for hosting my Video files that I Actually own and create, because not everyone shares copyrighted material, if we will be getting something for paying for the lifetime.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001702848542 Bradlee Kuhn

      Kim Dotcom has tweeted about compensating MU premium members if/when he’s able to access user data from MU. He hasn’t said in what way that will translate however. I was hoping someone would ask during the press event but no one did.

  • Alexdochkin

    still down… http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/mega.co.nz.html
    Not sure if it will be worth waiting…

  • I Share Files Online

    Copyright warning

    MEGA respects the copyrights of others and requires that users of the MEGA cloud service comply with the laws of copyright. You are strictly prohibited from using the MEGA cloud service to infringe copyrights. You may not upload, download, store, share, display, stream, distribute, e-mail, link to, transmit or otherwise make available any files, data, or content that infringes any copyright or other proprietary rights of any person or entity.

    • I Share Files Online

      I use websites like TPB but it seems to me like MEGA is not the website for me. I have respect for him fighting the man but NOT being able to share what I want? Fuck that that shit.

      • Darkhog

        Stating such things and actually checking them are two different things. This statement is only so MAFIAA would “fuck off”, because IN THEORY Mega don’t want their users to share copyrighted material. So the only person they can sue is the uploader himself. Good luck with that when you’re connecting to Mega via Tor or VPN.

  • Guest

    Only the source code loads. mega fail

  • Loser

    and he expects people to pay for this? fucking worthless. I do notice that is says “BETA” at the top but at this rate I dont see it pass Beta.
    I guess the country it’s in.. is just failing him

  • Fred_Mertzberg

    Finally, it has improved but still not there yet. Overloaded?

    Temporary error, retrying.

    616779_516361058394523_1801724322_o.jpg (355 KB)
    36%

  • Mega Over Load

    I can login but upload not working. Basically useless.

    • Update

      It works now. Make sure Chrome is updated or use IE10.
      Both working fine.

      • ScrewEwe2

        Tried IE10 for 4 minutes and then uninstalled. IE10 sucks Ass.

  • DMCA

    Man. This is gonna freak out the MAFIAA.
    Let the DMCA games begin. :)

  • cupid_stunt

    cannot access it still. sign up and no mail of confirmation received, chrome/srware iron/ie/ffox the lot, nada. what a load of bullshit this site is, the remainder of this comment is
    flagged/ not decipherable due to being sat on by some fat bastard
    off topic, am i the only one who uses this site as a search engine for downloads by copy/pasting the url?
    http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=738425
    just an example of the instances of vampire hunter that can be found, if so, this must be a better search engine than chrome///////// ha ha ha

    • cupid_stunt

      /notice.cgi?sID=738425

  • Pingback: Il ritorno di MEGAUPLOAD

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

NewsBits

Even more news...

  • The Pirate Bay Isn’t Down Completely, Just Having a Few Issues

    Twitter and Facebook, not to mention the TorrentFreak inbox, are currently alive with complaints that The...

  • Pirate Bay Founder Gottfrid Svartholm on Freedom of Speech

    Freedom of speech is a highly valued commodity, but should people be allowed to say whatever...

  • Blu-ray Anti-Piracy Tech Stops Discs and Promotes Purchases

    An anti-piracy system present in all official Blu-ray players since 2012 has received a fresh update...

  • Foxtel Breeds Pirates by Locking Up Game of Thrones

    One of the main reasons why people turn to piracy is the lack of legal alternatives....

  • UK Student Admits Breaching Sony Copyrights With Leak of PS3 SDK

    Last year an Internet user known as El Nomeo leaked version 3.70 of Sony’s Playstation3 SDK...

MostDiscussed

Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.

CopyQuote

Left Quote

“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.

Peter Sunde Left Quote

PopularArticles

A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.