Raid Knocks Torrent Sites Offline, Anonymous Vows Revenge

Swedish authorities on Monday raided the host company of many popular torrent and sports-streaming sites, knocking them offline. In response, an Anonymous member vowed revenge against the Swedish government.

PRQ.se, which was founded by two co-founders of The Pirate Bay (but which only hosts a relay for The Pirate Bay), was the target of the raid, according to TorrentFreak.


An Anonymous member, meanwhile, posted a YouTube clip Monday claiming that the Swedish government had “done a raid on the pirate bay and other torrents sites” [sic].

“The raid on PRQ disabled many of our torrent sites,” said the message. “We see this as a crime against freedom to information and there for we have disabled some of swedish governments or affiliate sites in protest against this raid” [sic].

Interestingly, the Anonymous member later acknowledges the raid was not targeted at The Pirate Bay.

“Swed’s raided PRQ which effects torrent sites but was not a direct attack on tpb and as far as I can tell would not really effect tpb at all,” [sic] says the post.

The Anonymous message continues to list more than a dozen sites affiliated with the Swedish government as potential targets for Distributed Denial of Service or other attacks. As of Tuesday afternoon, every listed site is loading normally.

PRQ and several sites hosted by the company, however, remain inaccessible.

Anonymous has a history of attempted or successful attacks against governments following law enforcement raids on torrent-hosting sites, including targeting the U.S. Department of Justice following an American-backed raid against Megaupload early this year.