Despite the US government’s crackdown, the biggest illegal book download site, Z-Library, is back on the “clear web” thanks to a hack. To bypass domain name locks, the site provides a unique domain name for each user.
In just a few years, the Z-Library site has become a true reference in terms of illegal downloading of books and articles. And for good reason: it has almost 12 million books and 85 million articles, accessible to anyone in the world. A site obviously in the crosshairs of many state organizations around the world, be it Arcom in France or the US government. Z-Library may have found a definitive solution to stay operational in the ” clear net “, the web says surface and that it does not require access to the ” dark web through the Tor system, for example.
Z-Library attacked from all sides by anti-piracy organizations
as reportednumeralLast September, the hacking site was blocked by French ISPs after a court decision. The only solution to access it anyway: change your DNS by overriding the default ones. The only solution to have a really effective lockdown: take the Z-Library servers offline, which requires locating them (which is complex).
by his side,torrentfreakremember that late last year, the US government had managed to obtain legal proceedings against the hacking site. More than 200 domain names had been seized andTwo alleged Russian operators of Library Z have been arrested in Argentina in connection with a criminal investigation.But even with these measures, Z-Library has always remained online.
In a blog post dated November 18, 2022, the administrators showed continued resolve. They said they think that”Humanity’s knowledge and cultural heritage must be accessible to everyone in the world, regardless of their wealth, social status, nationality, citizenship, etc. This is the sole purpose for which Z-Library is made.They added to do everything possible to “respond to all complaints about files hosted in our library if they infringe copyright.However, there are still tens of millions of downloadable files.
A unique domain name for each user
The sinew of war for the anti-piracy authorities is the blocking of domain names: it is the simplest weapon technically and from a legal point of view. But it’s also a risky method: hacking sites tend to multiply domain names and change them regularly. It is the same for Z-Library.
Until recently, to connect to Z-Library, you had to go through the Tor protocol and through a Telegram bot. But in a February 11 blog post, the site’s administrators detail the new procedure that prevents the use of Tor: Now, a simple web browser is enough to illegally download books and articles. You have to register on a website andafter logging into your account, you will be redirected to your personal domain. Keep your personal domain private! Please do not reveal your personal domain or share the link to your domain as it is protected by your own password and cannot be seen by other users.“We can read.
For our part, we tried the system with default DNS and without VPN, which did not work.
We can see that different extensions and registrations are used: unique domain names are a series of characters, mainly letters. A relatively innovative way for download and piracy sites: The Pirate Bay does the same thing, but only with five alternative domain names, in case the old ones go down. This time, potentially millions of domain names have been generated.
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