TorrentFreak suggests that the DDoS attacker goes by the online name of Zeiko, and quotes a what.cd IRC channel conversation to explain the motive. According to this scenario, Zeiko had asked what.cd for an ‘invite’ to the tracker, but was refused. Private torrents are by invite only. The purpose is generally to ensure that all members are genuine sharers and not just downloaders – thus maintaining good download speeds for all other members. “what.cd is now being under DDoS attack until I get my invite. attack is set to 48hours, be back later i hope i’ll have my invite,” wrote Zeiko.
The DDoS was successful, and what.cd is still down long past the suggested 48 hour duration. However, what happened between the initial threat and now remains confused. Shortly after the threat, a new Twitter account appeared under the name Zeiko Anonymous. “Zeiko hates PIRACY” it announced. “Who is going to be the next Piracy DDoS target...? WE’LL SEE..” Over the next few hours, a total of five ‘Piracy DDoS’ projects were announced.
TorrentFreak comments, “During the day four more attacks were launched against IPTorrents, HDBits, The Vault and SceneAccess. At the time of writing What.cd, BroadcastTheNet and SceneAccess remain inaccessible. The other sites can be reached but were offline earlier today.” As of now, only what.cd seems to be down.”
At around 1:00 am (GMT) today, Zeiko Anonymous announced “OPERATION CANCELLED.. (thank mytent****) take it easy.” All other tweets (apart from a retweet of the what.cd announcement quoted above, have been removed. But in the meantime, Zeiko Anonymous has drawn the ire of Anonymous proper – probably as much for associating himself with the hacktivist collective (which is hardly likely to attack torrents) as for the attacks themselves. “This Anti-Pirate .@ZeikoAnonymous who DdoS few private trackers, is not part of or/and does not encompass anything to do with #Anonymous,” tweeted Stun. “Well @anonymousOwn3r was dealt with. I guess @ZeikoAnonymous is next,” added @AnonyBroadcast.
The attacks have also annoyed non-torrent users. “@ZeikoAnonymous this is a slight annoyance. DDoS does nothing to stop piracy. you are only promoting these sites, idiot,” tweeted @jasonmog.
What we don’t know is whether the IRC Zeiko is the same person (or group) as Twitter’s Zeiko Anonymous. If the attacks came from the same person, out of pique, it demonstrates how easy it is to launch a successful DDoS – just some spare cash and access to a botnet. If they are not the same person (and many people are suggesting that Zeiko Anonymous is a Fed – that is, law enforcement in general rather than FBI specifically), then it shows how the anonymity of the internet can cloak vigilantes as well as hacktivists.