Dozens of torrent sites go offline in huge piracy crackdown after a surge in traffic from people trying to illegally stream Game of Thrones
- Sites including WorldWideTorrents and 1337x appeared to be offline last week
- TorrentFreak suggests a surge in traffic followed by a DDoS attack was to blame
- Most sites are back online, but several, including TorrentProject.se are still down
They're regularly used to illegally download films and TV programmes, but it seems that users may have to look for alternatives to torrent sites.
Dozens of the file-sharing sites crashed last week after a surge in traffic from people looking to illegally stream the final episode of Game of Thrones.
And while some of the sites have been restored, several, including TorrentProject.se are still offline as part of the major piracy crackdown.
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They're regularly used to illegally download films and TV programmes, but it seems that users may have to look for alternatives to torrent sites. Dozens of the sites crashed last week after a surge in traffic from people looking to stream Game of Thrones (stock image)
The problems were first noticed by TorrentFreak, a site specialising in file-sharing, on Friday last week.
Dozens of sites, including WorldWideTorrents and 1337x appeared to go down after a huge increase in traffic from people looking to illegally stream the final episode of Game of Thrones.
And TorrentFreak reports that a subsequent distribute denial of service (DDoS) attack compounded this issue, leaving users faced with a 403 error message.
In a post on its website, TorrentFreak wrote: 'TorrentFreak spoke to several torrent site admins who noticed an increase of suspicious traffic which slowed down or toppled their sites, at least temporarily.'
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Dozens of sites, including WorldWideTorrents and 1337x appeared to go down after a huge increase in traffic from people looking to illegally stream the final episode of Game of Thrones
The TorrentProject.se website is still be down, and an error message when visiting the site says: 'Access to the websites listed on this page has been blocked pursuant to orders of the high court'
While some of the sites seem to have recovered and are back online, others appear to still be having issues.
The TorrentProject.se website, one of the most popular torrent sites, is still be down, and an error message when visiting the site says: 'Access to the websites listed on this page has been blocked pursuant to orders of the high court.'
This suggests that copyright holders have reported the site for streaming content illegally.
TorrentFreak added: 'The above shows that the torrent ecosystem remains vulnerable.
'DDoS attacks and domain issues are nothing new, but after the shutdown of KAT, Torrentz, Extratorrent, and other giants, the remaining sites have to carry a larger burden.'
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