How Apple and Facebook Helped To Take Down KickassTorrents (pcworld.com)

Reader itwbennett writes (edited): Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of the torrent directory service KickassTorrents, was arrested in Poland earlier this week, charged with copyright infringement and money laundering. As we dig deeper as to what exactly happened, it turns out Apple and Facebook were among the companies that handed over data to the U.S. in its investigation. Department of Homeland Security investigators traced IP addresses associated with KickassTorrents domains to a Canadian ISP, which turned over server data, including emails. At some point, investigators noticed that Vaulin had an Apple email account that was used to make iTunes purchases from two IP addresses -- both of which also accessed a Facebook account promoting KickassTorrents.if you're wondering where exactly iTunes came into play, here's a further explanation. It all started in November 2015, when an undercover IRS Special Agent reached out to a KickassTorrents representative about hosting an advertisement on the site. An agreement was made and the ad, which purportedly advertised a program to study in the United States, was to be placed on individual torrent listings for $300 per day. When it finally went live on March 14th 2016, a link appeared underneath the torrent download buttons for five days. Sure it was a short campaign, but it was enough to link KAT to a Latvian bank account, one that received $31 million in deposits -- mainly from advertising payments -- between August 2015 and March 2016. Upon further investigation of the email accounts, and corresponding reverse lookups, it was found that the account holder had made a purchase on iTunes.

Comments

Re:If this is true...

[GameboyRMH]

More seriously, he made a large number of enormous mistakes, here are the biggest:

1. Looks like his real name was on the goddamn hosting for KAT. Perfect job for an anonymous shell company held by a Russian lawyer, but instead he left a business card on a neat little stand at the crime scene.

2. Not separating his real name completely from his identity as KAT admin OR his casual pseudonym. He should've created a completely new identity for the KAT admin that doesn't touch any others with a 30-foot pole.

3. Apparently he thought Canada was a good place to host the servers safe from the reach of US lawmen. Such a US-unfriendly place this is, that he felt confident storing incriminating info on the server for some reason.

4. Insufficient money laundering. He even could've accepted ad payments in Bitcoin. Really, he put less effort into laundering criminal proceeds than your average 1%er puts into not paying taxes.

5. Being on Facebook never helps.

In short, he was running this operation almost completely in the open, relying only on the assumption that he couldn't be extradited and the obfuscation of naming the company Cryptoneat instead of KickassTorrents Inc. to keep his ass out of prison. Ross "You'll take payment in Bitcoin without a second thought, Mr. Mob Boss? Seems Legit." Ulbricht looks like a genius in comparison.