Pirate Bay ascends to the cloud to escape authorities

File-sharing website Pirate Bay has dumped its traditional servers for virtual machines (VMs) running in the cloud.

The move is an attempt to prevent authorities from shutting down Pirate Bay's operations. The website has become synonymous with illegal online piracy and has had to duck authority crack downs in recent months.

"Our data flows around in thousands of clouds, in deeply encrypted forms, ready to be used when necessary. Earth bound nodes that transform the data are as deeply encrypted and reboot into a deadlock if not used for eight hours," Pirate Bay said in a blog post.

"All attempts to attack the Pirate Bay from now on, is an attack on everything and nothing. [Pirate Bay] will still be here, for as long as we want it to."

According to a TorrentFreak report citing company sources, the new cloud operations will be run through VMs hosted on multiple continents. That shift will make it easier for Pirate Bay to change service providers if a cloud operator gets shut down.

While much of the site's operations will be moving to the ether, not everything will be in the cloud.

Pirate Bay will continue to control load-balancers and transit routers through an encrypted connection. The move could allow Pirate Bay to keep user data from the prying eyes of cloud providers.

Pirate Bay has had its share of legal troubles this year. Last May, the UK High Court ordered five major internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to Pirate Bay's website. The UK order was followed by a Dutch court ruling ordering five more ISPs to block site access.

:story: V3.co.uk