Well that sounds bad. Are they all-in on piracy like their server is hosted on international waters or rotating between some whack-a-mole servers from like kazakhstan and mongolia and eswatini?
Yup. Hosted on a server farm aboard a repurposed cargo ship flying a pirate flag roaming international waters, spending its life evading the coast guard, using starlink satellites to provide connectivity to the rest of the world. The crew is made up of former cyber criminals evading the law from their home countries for hacking related offenses, along with a few actual Somali pirates or random killers and war criminals. They have the greatest collection of pirated software, raw leaks and rare media files that you won’t find anywhere else.
“Information… wants to be free.” says one of the administrators before taking a final drag on an unfiltered cigarette and flicking it off the deck.
There’s a distinct Russian accent in his voice, from his days living under the Soviet Union. After its collapse, he moved out west to what is now Belarus, and fought in underground cage matches for money. After a few years spent getting beaten and bloodied, he decided to start looking for new work when he learned about this thing called the World Wide Web from one of his former Soviet colleagues. From there he picked up skills writing programs and hacking into systems, taking random contract jobs through IRC for anonymous clients.
One day after a botched job involving millions of dollars stolen from some wealthy government officials, authorities were finally close to catching him.
Seeking help, an IRC user by the name of “Чудовище“ offered him an opportunity, to come aboard a special ship, the first of its kind, and live freely on board as a stateless citizen in international waters. There he would be able to continue developing his technical skills and contribute to a good cause: information freedom.
“In the old days, it was tough getting data on and off the ship. We had to exchange pallets of hard drives with other passing ships out on the ocean. But now…” he gestures back at the array of satellite dishes along the deck “…much easier, and anyone anywhere can connect to our network.”
“Whatever you look for, we have. Classified documents, private snuff videos, Epstein’s lists… and even FarCry source code!”
