KickAss Torrents (Photo : Facebook)
Rumors of a possible KickassTorrents happening soon have been practically shot down as a new report indicated that the last trace of KAT's web presence has been wiped out. Ukraine-based Cryptoneat, tagged by the U.S. government as dummy company for KAT operations, is no more and the exit seems deliberate.
A month following the arrest of alleged KAT owner Artem Vaulin and the seizure of numerous KickassTorrents domains, Cryptoneat simply vanished and is no longer accessible, TorrentFreak reported. "In addition to the disappearance of its website, the company's main domain has just expired," the report said.
Cryptoneat operated using two domains and both have been deemed inactive at the moment. TorrentFreak said that one of the domain registrations has recently expired and apparently no attempts were made to renew. And employees of the company, traced through their LinkedIn profiles, have already moved on to other jobs.
Cryptoneat following KickassTorrents' demise came as no surprise as U.S. federal authorities have identified the firm as front company used by Vaulin in running KAT. "Vaulin has operated KAT under the auspices of a Ukrainian-based front company called Cryptoneat," a Homeland Security report was quoted by TorrentFreak as saying.
And in the same report, key Cryptoneat personnel were pinpointed as part of the KickassTorrents crew when the latter was still up, thus establishing the link between the two operations. TorrentFreak said that no arrests have been made so far in relation to the Cryptoneat operations but more details on the case are likely to come out in the coming days.
The latest development doused cold water on the widespread speculations that KickassTorrents has been secretly revived and is in fact alive again through an unidentified mirror or clone site. However, the only solid signs of KAT's continuing web presence are the so-called replacements but many have been exposed as imposters or scamming operations. The most popular, KAT.am, is now reported as a site that steals credit card details of users.
For torrent fans, the safe bet remains the KAT alternatives that emerged as the go-to sites when KickassTorrents and Torrentz went offline. Leading the pack are ExtraTorrent and The Pirate Bay, the latter now acknowledged as King of Torrents and the best torrenting or download destination.
