This changed abruptly August last year when a series of troubled events took the site offline. When it was still down after a year, many had given up hope that it would ever return.

Today there’s a glimmer of hope to report to estranged Demonoid members, as the site is preparing for a glorious comeback. TorrentFreak contacted the Demonoid team via its demonoid.com email address where the Demonoid team confirmed the plans.

“I can’t give you any specifics at the moment, but yeah, we are planning to bring the site back,” we were told.

A follow-up request, for more details and whether the same people are behind the site, remains unanswered for now. However, a landing page on Demonoid.com and Demonoid.me brings more hope.

“We will rebuild! Coming back soon, please check back later. Thanks for your visit!,” it reads, with a Bitcoin donation option below.

It is currently unknown whether the site’s legal troubles are still ongoing.

When Demonoid had its servers taken down by Ukrainian hosting company Colocall last year local authorities explained that Interpol had requested the action as part of a criminal investigation into the site’s alleged owners in Mexico.

Months earlier Mexican authorities had carried out raids in Monterrey, the capital city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León. Their prime target was a Demonoid operator, and one person connected to the BitTorrent tracker was subsequently imprisoned but later released.

At this point TorrentFreak is unable to confirm whether the Demonoid domains are still in the hands of the old crew. Neither do we know if the planned resurrection will be with the old user and torrent database.

Earlier this year the mysterious D2.vu site launched using a copy of the Demonoid user and torrent database. The operator of the spin-off claimed not to be related to the Demonoid owners and thus far the site hasn’t gotten much traction.

The people behind the planned resurrection of Demonoid have access to the site’s original .com and .me domains so there’s a good chance that the site may return fully, backed by part of the old crew.

Time will tell whether that’s the case.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

With more than half a year of downtime Demonoid breaks the previous record it set in 2007/2008.

When Demonoid went down at the end of July the site’s admin initially blamed a DDoS attack.

In the days after the raid things went from bad to worse and the site’s Ukrainian hosting provider eventually pulled the plug.

This action followed a request from Interpol, who assisted Mexican authorities in their criminal investigation into the BitTorrent tracker and its operators.

Fast forward six-months and Demonoid is still offline.

However, there’s still a possibility that the site may eventually return.

The hope of Demonoid users was fueled in November when the tracker briefly returned, as well as by the recent switch to a new .HK domain.

Time will tell whether Demonoid can indeed make a comeback once again.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Local authorities explained that Interpol asked them to take action as part of an investigation into the site’s alleged owners in Mexico.

In the months that followed the Demonoid team remained silent and the site itself showed absolutely no sign of life, simply timing out. Yesterday, however, something changed.

All of a sudden the Demonoid.me domain started to respond again. Initially it displayed a “nothing to see here” notice, and a few hours later it redirected to a new demonoid.hk domain.

The new Hong Kong domain was registered about a month ago and is currently displaying a “403 Forbidden” HTTP status code. The new site appears to be hosted in Hong Kong as well, where we saw the Demonoid tracker return earlier.

The tracker has gone up and down a few times since then and is currently offline.

While there’s absolutely no guarantee that Demonoid will return in the near future the recent developments clearly show that something is going on behind the scenes. The restart of the tracker at a new hosting company, paired with the new domain showing some response, offers hope to those who miss Demonoid dearly.

The last time TorrentFreak heard from the Demonoid admin was September last year. At the time we were told that there is “nothing interesting to report yet.”

“I hope there will be one day, but it might not be soon,” the tech admin added. Perhaps that day is coming closer now?

In many ways the current situation is reminiscent of the downtime Demonoid suffered half a decade ago. During the summer of 2007 the site shut down its servers after receiving legal threats from the CRIA. After being offline for six months the site eventually reappeared in full glory early 2008.

Time will tell whether Demonoid can make a comeback once again.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

However, after a few weeks of service the tracker seems to have died already.

The inferno.demonoid.me trackers are no longer responding and demonoid.me DNS records are missing some crucial entries.

The last update we got from Demonoid’s admin was in mid-September, when the hope for a quick resurrection was already tempered.

“I hope there will be one day, but it might not be soon,” the tech admin told TorrentFreak at the time.

“We are down, and we’re not looking into putting the site back up at the moment,” the admin added.

Time will tell whether Demonoid can make a comeback once again.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In the days after the raid things went from bad to worse and the site’s Ukrainian hosting provider eventually pulled the plug.

This action followed a request from Interpol, who assisted Mexican authorities in their criminal investigation into the BitTorrent tracker and its operators.

Fast forward three months and all the domains still fail to load, and the tracker remains offline as well.

The last update we got was in mid-September, when the hope for a quick resurrection was tempered.

“I hope there will be one day, but it might not be soon,” the tech admin told TorrentFreak at the time.

“We are down, and we’re not looking into putting the site back up at the moment,” the admin added.

Nevertheless, many Demonoid users keep hope that it will return eventually, as alternatives are hard to find.

The current situation is reminiscent of the downtime Demonoid suffered during the summer of 2007, when the site shut down its servers after receiving legal threats from the CRIA.

After being offline for six months the site eventually reappeared in full glory early 2008.

Time will tell whether Demonoid can make a comeback once again.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In an update on the situation, the sole tech admin of the site tells us that it will take a while before the site returns.

The DDoS resulted in resulting in a series of problems that may take a while to address. However, he does not intend to throw the towel for now.

“I don’t plan on shutting down, but if Im going to fix it I have to do it properly. That means upgrading a lot of our 7 year old hardware and maybe bringing up the beta only,” the admin told TorrentFreak.

Quite a few people have offered to help out, but the admin doesn’t want to expose sensitive user data to complete strangers.

“I have gotten a few offers to help but that means giving way too many privileges over the user data to a stranger…Can’t have that,” he tells us.

Users will have to be patient, but many of the older members have learned that by now. Over the years the site has had its fair share of downtime, sometimes disappearing for months on end.

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

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Although the site has a reasonable uptime record, there have been a few occasions where it has not only gone down, but has disappeared completely. We are currently in one of those periods.

Last week the latest of Demonoid’s difficulties turned out to be caused by a massive DDoS attack which initially crippled the site and then took it completely offine. But while DDoS attacks usually stop after a point has been made or the attackers get bored, the Demonoid admin explained that he had more on his mind.

“There might have been an attack from another angle, an exploit of sorts, but it’s hard to tell right now without a full check of everything,” he told TorrentFreak.

What that attack is, or was, remains unclear, but today even more problems are becoming apparent. On July 1 and then again today Aug 2, the domain entries for Demonoid.me were updated and now the URL is redirecting to straight to adverts. Unfortunately – and we presume this is something Demonoid’s admin would be completely against – some of those adverts contain a virus and other malware.

This particular one is redirecting to a variation of the 52664.bestfastget.com domain, a site with a particularly low trust rating.

Today, TorrentFreak contacted Demonoid’s admin to ask about the current situation but we are yet to receive a response. That said, we are not overly optimistic about the site’s health and future prospects.

To begin, while Demonoid’s admin told us that he would eventually bring the site back online, he clearly has other things on his mind. A really important family event puts a torrent site nowhere near the top of his priorities.

Also, the site redirecting to ads, without so much as a “Demonoid is down for maintenance” homepage, is not a good sign either – particularly when those ads serve up malware.

Next, Demonoid has been experiencing staffing issues this year. As we mentioned in an earlier article, there were rumors that one or maybe more Demonoid staffers had been questioned by authorities about their involvement in the site. Details are scarce, but according to sources pressure may have been mounting for some time.

Readers of our earlier article detailing IFPI’s anti-piracy strategy will recall that the music industry group said it had taken “strategic action” against Demonoid. Although its exact nature is unknown (and presumably wouldn’t extend to a DDoS), legal and/or political pressure is almost guaranteed.

It is also worth noting that pressure on file-sharing sites ratcheted up several levels in January and February this year following the raids on Megaupload. BTjunkie decided to throw in the towel and the uncertainty spread to several other sites, including Demonoid.

For now we’ll just have to wait, but it wouldn’t come as a shock if Demonoid remained down for months. Equally, and this is a distinct possibility given all the variables, don’t be surprised if its doors stay closed for good.

Update: Demonoid’s admin just told us that the redirection was put in place to avoid mounting bandwidth bills caused by the DDoS.

Update August 3: Demonoid no longer appears to be redirecting.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Based on what the sole tech admin of the site told us, it looks like it may take weeks before it will return.

“It started as a DDoS but then it caused a series of problems. These problems need to be fixed before the site can go back up, and it’s a complicated fix this time,” the Demonoid admin told TorrentFreak last week.

Initially the site displayed a “server busy” status message but yesterday the server was turned off completely.

Because of the downtime many people have been looking for news on the situation, with an interesting side effect.

The Facebook page DemonoidP2P, which amassed 100 likes in a year, skyrocketed to more than 4000 likes in a few days. All signs point at a troll page, but somehow ZDNet thinks otherwise.

In an article posted today the Facebook updates (including quotes that were pulled from our article) are passed on as news without any verification whatsoever.

The Facebook “admin” seems to be enjoying himself and suggests that a comeback is near. Unfortunately, this might be a tad bit optimistic.

For now, Demonoid users have no other option than to flock to one of the many alternatives.

Update: ZDNet posted an update on the Facebook issue.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Over the years the site has had its fair share of downtime, sometimes disappearing for months on end.

Yesterday, a million plus Demonoid users noticed that they could no longer access the site. Instead of the usual welcome screen users were confronted with a “server busy” message, suggesting that the BitTorrent tracker is facing technical difficulties.

TorrentFreak got in touch with the tech admin of the site who informed us that they are in serious trouble. Demonoid was overloaded by a DDoS attack which hit the server hard, resulting in a series of problems that may take a while to address.

“It started as a DDoS but then it caused a series of problems. These problems need to be fixed before the site can go back up, and it’s a complicated fix this time,” the Demonoid admin told TorrentFreak.

Aside from the DDoS assault, Demonoid’s server may also have been compromised by another attack.

“There might have been an attack from another angle, an exploit of sorts, but it’s hard to tell right now without a full check of everything,” the admin says.

While Demonoid is determined to return to its full glory, it might take a while before the site is up and running again. After an exodus of staff earlier this year there is only one person available to work on server issues, so progress is slow.

“Our human resources became limited in the last few months. All tech issues are handled just by me now and there is no one else to take the job,” the admin told us, adding that his time is also limited by real life issues that take priority.

“I’ll fix the site as soon as possible, but it might be a while this time,” the admin says.

In recent years Demonoid has been in the cross-hairs of several anti-piracy outfits. It was pressured to move out of Canada by the CRIA and most recently the MPAA and RIAA reported Demonoid as a “rogue site” to the U.S. Government. However, there is no indication that the current attacks at Demonoid are anti-piracy related.

For the millions of Demonoid users there’s no other option than to wait, once again.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.