Hacker Takes Down Popular French Piracy Provider YggTorrent

A popular provider of pirated content for French users, YggTorrent, is shutting down after a hacker breached one of the platform’s servers and stole its data.

YggTorrent has been around since 2017, offering an estimated 6.6 million users a way to search for and download peer-to-peer torrents of various pirated media. The site now says it’s “permanently closed” following the breach, which occurred on Tuesday and involved a hacker compromising a “secondary pre-production server, separate from the main system.”

(Credit: Yggtorrent.org)

The hacker, who goes by “Grolum,” created their own site, which says they breached YggTorrent over its alleged greed. “Years of lies. An empire built on extortion. It’s over. The servers have been emptied, then destroyed,” Grolum wrote in French.

In addition, Grolum leaked the stolen data, though personally identifiable information has supposedly been redacted. “Now that this data is public, professionals will be able to examine it, gather additional evidence, and perhaps even take legal action against those responsible for the site, as well as against hosting providers or other identified third parties,” the hacker wrote.

The leak site

(Credit: yggleak.top)

YggTorrent has since confirmed the hacker looted sensitive data, including user passwords. That said, “the passwords in the database were hashed and salted, meaning they were not stored in plain text and had cryptographic protection preventing direct reading,” YggTorrent says.

Although YggTorrent has a backup, the platform still decided to bow out, describing the hack as a carefully executed attempt to permanently eliminate the site. In its announcement, YggTorrent also noted the hacker drained the cryptocurrency wallets used to fund the servers, “representing tens of thousands of Euros.”

“Continuing in this climate of constant hostility no longer reflects the spirit that motivated us. We refuse to drag you into a series of attacks, tensions, and uncertainties. Returning only to leave again under constant threat would no longer make sense,” YggTorrent said. “This is a difficult decision. It marks the end of an era. But it is being made with clarity and responsibility.”

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That said, the YggTorrent site is displaying a countdown clock, suggesting it plans to debut a new offering 11 days from now.

In the meantime, Grolum says they targeted YggTorrent partly because the site introduced a controversial “Turbo Mode” in December that forced free users to pay if they wanted to download more than five torrents per day. “Taking advantage of your monopoly, you held people hostage with a ridiculous quota system,” according to Grolum, who also accused the site of other underhanded tactics.

The hacker has also salvaged the YggTorrent tracker and posted it on a new site. However, YggTorrent warns, “We strongly advise against downloading anything from torrent sites that attempt to capitalize on this event by posing as successors or alternatives,” because they could deliver malware.