There’s a slight panic breaking out among KickassTorrents users, who are having a hard time accessing the site.
Over the past few hours Chrome and Firefox (and Safari) have both started to block access to Kat.cr due to reported security issues.
Instead of a page filled with the latest torrents, visitors are presented with an ominous red warning banner.
“Deceptive site ahead: Attackers on kat.cr may trick you into doing something dangerous like installing software or revealing your personal information,” the Chrome warning reads.
Chrome warns against using Kat.cr
Firefox users encounter a similar banner, branding Kat.cr as a “web forgery” which may trick users into sharing personal information. This may lead to identity theft or other fraud.
“Web forgeries are designed to trick you into revealing personal or financial information by imitating sources you may trust. Entering any information on this web page may result in identity theft or other fraud,” the browser warns.
Firefox’s alert
Interestingly, Google’s safebrowsing page for Kat.cr currently lists no issues with the site. (update: it’s now listed as deceptive)
The KAT team informs TorrentFreak that they are looking into the issue and hope to have the blocks removed soon.
This is not the first time the two browsers have flagged KickassTorrents. Last year site was flagged on several occasions after it was linked to a malicious advertiser.
At the time the KAT team said they addressed the issue in a matter of hours, but it nonetheless took more than two days before the site was unblocked on both Firefox and Chrome.
Impatient or adventurous users who want to bypass the warning can do so by disabling their browser’s security warnings altogether in the settings, at their own risk of course.
Update: Safari is also blocking Kat.cr, and Avast antivirus also displays a warning.
Update: The KAT team has found the problem, which is related to the link wrapper the site uses for external links. The wrapper is blocked now and Google has been informed accordingly.
“In order to improve users security we are wrapping every external link in confirmation window and this time google alert is referring to a wrapped link that has been posted in our community. We’ve blocked that site thus rendering those external links unusable. We’ve reported it to google and expecting this security alert soon to be lifted,” the KAT team informed TF.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Source: TorrentFreak