Ukraine Latest to Crackdown on Illegal File Sharing

Posted 02/04/2012 at 7:08am | by Pulkit Chandna

2

Comments

Print

This isn’t the best time to be in charge of a file-sharing site, with authorities around the world  — everywhere from the United States to Middle-earth (or New Zealand as it’s known more popularly) to Sweden — currently on a rampage against online file repositories brimming with unauthorized content. Ukrainian authorities are the latest to crackdown on online file sharing, having taken down popular file-sharing site Ex.ua a couple of days back. But that’s not where the story ends. You know the drill: hit the jump for more.

Usually, such takedowns quickly become a cause célèbre among hacktivists, who flock to avenge their demise. This particular case is no different. Following Ex.ua’s takedown by the Ukrainian authorities, enraged Internet users attacked government sites in retaliation. These people targeted the official sites of the country’s president and interior minister using the tried-and-tested distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) technique.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Ukrainian authorities said Ex.ua had been under investigation since July last year, apparently after a number of companies complained against the site. But Microsoft Ukraine, one of the companies named as a complainant in the matter by the Ukrainian interior ministry, is said to have denied being the “immediate initiator of the EX.UA inspection” as is being claimed.

The ministry claims to have seized 200 servers containing as much as 6,000 TB worth of files in a raid on the site’s office.