Episode
11 May 2021 Official episode · Official transcript
incident response cybercrime
The episode examines The Pirate Bay, its BitTorrent indexing service, legal battles, infrastructure takedowns, censorship measures, network attacks, and resilience techniques.
Topics: BitTorrent peer-to-peer distribution and torrent indexing, Hosting redundancy and removal of single points of failure, Front-end load balancing and multi-location hosting, Fake torrent poisoning and downloader IP-address collection, Compromise of email, internal networks, and VoIP systems, Denial-of-service attacks, DMCA notices and cross-border legal takedowns, DNS blocking and ISP-level censorship, BGP route hijacking and route sinkholing, Tor and VPN circumvention, Domain switching and top-level-domain seizure, Privacy-focused DNS services
Links published on the Darknet Diaries episode page. Not LLM output.
Qualified statements from this episode, not graph facts.
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi MEMBER_OF The Pirate Bay
Peter identifies himself as one of the co-founders and says he was part of starting The Pirate Bay.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“I was part of starting The Pirate Bay”
Gottfrid MEMBER_OF The Pirate Bay
Gottfrid was one of the three people in Sweden who eventually ran The Pirate Bay.
Explicit Confidence 96% · Jack Rhysider EP 92 Details
“it eventually got picked up by three people in Sweden to run the site; Gottfrid, Fredrik, and Peter”
Fredrik MEMBER_OF The Pirate Bay
Fredrik was one of the three people in Sweden who eventually ran The Pirate Bay.
Explicit Confidence 96% · Jack Rhysider EP 92 Details
“three people in Sweden to run the site; Gottfrid, Fredrik, and Peter”
The Pirate Bay USES BitTorrent
The Pirate Bay is described as an index and search engine for BitTorrent files.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 92 Details
“it’s an index of BitTorrent files”
The Pirate Bay CONTAINS torrent file
Users submit torrent files to The Pirate Bay, which lists them as locations for downloading content.
Explicit Direction flagged Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 92 Details
“users would submit torrent files which were just locations of where you could download the music or movies”
The Pirate Bay ASSOCIATED_WITH PRQ
The Pirate Bay was hosted at PRQ, a company belonging to one of its co-founders.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 92 Details
“The Pirate Bay was hosted at a Swedish company called PRQ”
Kavkaz Center ASSOCIATED_WITH PRQ
Kavkaz Center was a customer hosted by PRQ.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“another customer that the PRQ was hosting which was Kavkaz Center”
The Pirate Bay INVOLVES Kavkaz Center
The first major Pirate Bay takedown involved a police raid aimed at PRQ's customer Kavkaz Center, which also took The Pirate Bay offline.
Explicit Confidence 96% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“Accidentally, it took down The Pirate Bay as well”
The Pirate Bay ATTRIBUTED_TO Vladimir Putin
Peter attributes the first raid to Vladimir Putin being upset about PRQ hosting a Chechen rebel movement; Jack repeats that attribution, though the account is presented by the speakers rather than independently established.
Attributed Confidence 88% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“It was because of Putin being upset with PRQ hosting a customer which was a Chechen rebel movement”
The Pirate Bay USES front-end load balancer
After the raid, The Pirate Bay used a front-end load balancer and backup locations to avoid a single point of failure.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“we put up basically a front-end load balancer at one location and then we had a backup location for that”
The Pirate Bay user-data breach COMPROMISES The Pirate Bay
A hacker accessed The Pirate Bay's admin panel, exposed user details, and gained full control of the website.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 92 Details
“a hacker from Argentina hacked into The Pirate Bay and exposed a bunch of user details”
“It looks like he got into the admin panel which gave him full control of the website”
MediaDefender USES fake torrent poisoning
MediaDefender uploaded fake torrents, such as a dummy Spider-Man torrent, to identify and pursue downloaders.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“They would upload a fake Spider-Man torrent”
MediaDefender USES IP address collection
MediaDefender collected downloaders' IP addresses from fake torrents and used them to seek customer information from ISPs.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“when people start downloading it, they would take the IP address and then go to the internet provider”
MediaDefender USES denial-of-service attack
Peter says MediaDefender conducted denial-of-service attacks against The Pirate Bay.
Explicit Confidence 96% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“they did quite a lot of those”
MediaDefender network compromise COMPROMISES MediaDefender
An acquaintance of the Pirate Bay group hacked MediaDefender and obtained access to its email boxes, internal network, and voice-over-IP system.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“actually hacked them and got full access to their e-mail boxes and their internal network and their voiceover IP system”
MediaDefender network compromise INVOLVES MediaDefender
The MediaDefender network compromise involved the company whose internal communications and systems were accessed.
Derived Confidence 95% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“we got full access to their e-mail boxes and their internal network”
The Pirate Bay INVOLVES DNS blocking
The Pirate Bay was subjected to DNS blocking in Denmark and other country-level access restrictions.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 92 Details
“the largest ISP in Denmark put in place a DNS block so users couldn’t get to The Pirate Bay”
The Pirate Bay INVOLVES BGP route sinkholing
Major backbone providers stopped forwarding traffic destined for The Pirate Bay by sinkholing its BGP routes.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 92 Details
“major backbone providers stopped forwarding traffic destined to The Pirate Bay”
The Pirate Bay INVOLVES denial-of-service attack
The Pirate Bay experienced denial-of-service attacks attributed in the episode to MediaDefender.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 92 Details
“MediaDefender was conducting denial-of-service attacks on The Pirate Bay”
Church of Kopimism DEVELOPED_BY Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi
Peter says he came up with the kopimist concept and that he and friends registered the Church of Kopimism in Sweden.
Explicit Confidence 93% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“I came up with this idea”
“we registered the Church of Kopimism in Sweden”
Flattr DEVELOPED_BY Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi
Peter says he created Flattr as a payment system for getting paid for activities on the internet.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“I created a payment system for how to create – or get paid for doing things on the internet which is called Flattr”
Njalla DEVELOPED_BY Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi
The outro states that Peter started Njalla, a DNS privacy service.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 92 Details
“Peter started a company called Njalla which is a DNS privacy service”
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi USES Flattr
Peter left The Pirate Bay to work on Flattr instead.
Explicit Confidence 94% · Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi EP 92 Details
“I left to work on that instead”
Works mentioned in the transcript. Distinct from show-note sources.
Model gpt-5.6-luna · prompt 1.5.19 · schema 1.5.19 · 2026-09-13T07:03:01.829309+00:00