KickassTorrents (KAT) was pronounced dead back in July 2016. When the founder Artem Vaulin was arrested, the site went offline with no prior notification, leaving many fans heartbroken.
On December 16th, 2016, a group of devoted KAT ex-staffs has been able to revive it, reincarnating the notorious torrent site back from the dead hoping it to regain its former glory.
As a start, the new KAT is having an identical design to its already dead predecessor.
The idea to revive KAT happened shortly after its shutdown. Several KAT ex-staffs regrouped in an effort the get the community back online. Initially, they launched the Katcr.co forum as a new home. This was where the news about the KAT happened.
The team also hinted that the infamous torrent site could come back too, in the future.
Putting everything together took quite a bit of time for the team. They want to make sure that everything is secure before launching it. And after months recreating KAT, the team transformed Katcr.co into a fully operational torrent site, which has an identical look and feel. This way, former KAT users should feel right at home.
With the site up and running, the original KAT ex-staffs are rejoined by other original staffs.
“The majority of our original Staff, Admins and Moderation team joined us after Kat.cr went down - which is something we're very proud of. This shows the loyalty, dedication and real love for KAT that we all share,” said the team.
With many of its original people back on board, KAT is also joined by its dedicated uploaders. By starting with a clean database, the site aims to have a fresh start by populating itself with a fresh contents.
"We have all our major uploaders on board and they continued to share tirelessly even before the torrent engines returned. The torrent community can continue to expect to see uploads from all the names they know and trust," said the team.
The reincarnating KAT is also putting malicious copycats down to the ground. Some of them were attempting to steal personal information and credit card credentials from unsuspecting pirates. This is something common when a torrent site is seized and millions of people were left without their favorite torrent site..
"In order to keep our members safe we chose to rebuild and keep only safe elements. Despite the fact that a rebuild took longer, the safety of our community comes first," the team added.
While the new KAT can have a fresh start, sinking its teeth to malicious sites that operate under its name, the U.S. authorities are still pursuing legal action against the website's former operators. Time will tell whether the government will again take aim to the new KickassTorrents mirror and try to shut it down - very much like its predecessor.
On the first day, KAT is having a massive traffic surge, making the site to experience frequent down times and slow to load.
