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One week later, Demonoid still down after massive DDOS attack

Demonoid, one of the biggest torrent sites around, was taken down on July 25 after a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. One week later, the website is still down, although its administrator says progress has been made towards bringing it back.
Written by Emil Protalinski, Contributor

Update on August 3 - Demonoid admin: We'll be back

demonoid_down_1_week_later

Demonoid was hit by a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack late last month. The famous BitTorrent tracker has now been down for over a week, leaving millions of users seeking alternatives. The site originally displayed a "server busy" error message, but then the server was turned off completely and the site now gives a 404 error message.

On the bright side, I do have some good news to report in regards to this long outage. The Demonoid community has been supporting the website in these dark times, multiple parties are helping the site's administrator with the various technical issues, and breakthroughs have been made, according to the p2p site's Facebook Page. Please see the update below.

The attack is believed to have happened on the night of July 25, 2012. At first it seemed the issue would be a minor one with a quick fix:

July 26: Y'all may be experiencing some issues with the site. Getting it all fixed soon.

July 27: Still having issues with the servers. Hopefully soon we will get the problem resolved. I will keep everyone posted.

It turned out to be a much bigger problem. Demonoid and company started working very hard to get the site back up and running:

July 28: Still down, it seems to be a little more than just server issues at this point. We will not fully say it, because we are not sure if that is indeed the problem. Know that we are having breakthroughs with the issues, and that we are constantly working. We miss all of you and are trying our hardest to get our home back up. Love you guys!

July 28: Just to clear everyone up. It was a DDos attack, but the thing is, it really messed up alot of things. These problems need to be fixed before the site can go back up, and it’s a complicated fix this time. 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.

July 28: It really upsets us that we are not able to give our lovely users what they want currently. But to the Group that performed the attack, I will tell you this. We are a strong community, and we will get down to the bottom of this. And we will come back stronger and better then before.

July 29: Lots of trial and error today. I gotta go get some sleep. Night all. See you in the morning.

July 29: We do think this was a contracted hit, although lets not throw out the fact that "Anonymous" is back to attacking again. Although i don't know why someone who uses us would want to attack us.

This was all followed by a bit of humor to lighten up the mood, and a warning to counter the spammers trying to take advantage:

July 29: What's weird is when you own a p2p site, but you have to use one that's not yours in order to get a fix. Haha.

July 29: Another thing, we have not posted any donation links, and are even undecided if we will. SO, if you come across on. Please do not send to it. Unless the link is posted here by us, it is a fake. Be aware guys. I caught word that some were floating around.

Reinforcements arrive:

July 30: We got lots of companies helping us with the issues. And woulnt you know it. It's one of the smaller overlooked ones that is helping the most.

July 30: Forgot to mention. The site was taken completely offline intentionally. It will allow us to work faster this way. Love You all.

August 1: Lots of hard work on the site all day, and trying to get a close friend of ours on a tv show, that takes place where he is from. Sort of like a small payment for giving us a big breakthrough with the server issues. busy day!

Hopefully Demonoid will be back later this week. Anything can still happen, but something tells me the site will return very soon. As for those behind the attack, I'm sure Demonoid will share more in due time.

Update at 1:45 PM PST - TorrentFreak has pointed out to me on Twitter that this Facebook Page was never promoted on the Demonoid website, so you should take these Facebook postings with a grain of salt. I sincerely apologize for my mistake.

I have contacted Demonoid's administrator to confirm the Facebook Page is indeed fake and for a statement. I will update you if and when I hear back.

Update on August 3 - Demonoid admin: We'll be back

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