Every website always faces a possibility of being attacked. It doesn’t matter if it’s obscure, popular, public or private, security is always a game of cat and mouse.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
TorrentLeech, a well established private BitTorrent website recently got DDOS attacked, but the attackers have failed in their attempts to compromise the website. Now, TorrentLeech is in full working order and stronger than ever.
Late at night on May 14th, a user posted inquiring about the inability to connect to TorrentLeech. Turns out, for the brief period of time, some users were unable to connect either via browser or through their favourite BitTorrent client.
Another member of TorrentLeech posted a bit of news posted by the TorrentLeech staff (posted on the 15th) which read, “TorrentLeech is down since 4am GMT today, due to a ddos attack that targets our servers. The situation seems to have improved over the last hours, however has not ended yet.”
The website was quickly accessible again, but the attacks didn’t stop. Other TorrentLeech members were growing worried that maybe the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was responsible for the attack. Some figured an alleged ‘pay to leech’ feature may have drawn attention to the website.
Today, a staff member known as “Really!?” posted an update, informing all the TorrentLeech members on Slyck, “The attack was coming from an .il (Israel) IP range. We were able to contain the attack once and a second time. Since then, we are working normally again.”
The staff member also addressed the idea of pay-to-leech existing on TorrentLeech in the first place, “For the unfaithful still pretending, that TL is a pay for leech site, please try to become a VIP and you’ll find out what you get for it.” Really then quotes, “We mostly earn money by advertising products or services (affiliates).”
Advertising is a very common practice for just about any BitTorrent website trying to pay for bandwidth and maintenance costs. In the mean time, TorrentLeech is now back up and operational.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
