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With the FIFA World Cup in full swing, US law enforcement authorities appear to have seized the domain names of several popular sports streaming sites. The targeted sites, which include score808.com, hesgoal.com, freestreams-live1.com, and debilstreams.com, have millions of monthly visitors.
Sports hacking is prevalent around the world, with more than half of all sports fans regularly using unauthorized streaming services.
Football, also known as soccer in some parts of the world, is particularly problematic. It is considered a gateway sport that turns fans of other sports into streaming pirates.
This is of particular concern now that millions of pirates are tuning in to the World Cup. With this in mind, it's no surprise that law enforcement in the US appears to have taken down some of the most widely used sports streaming hacking domain names today.
Feds seize sports streaming sites
A few hours ago, popular sites like score808.com, hesgoal.com, 9goaltv.cc, freestreams-live1.com, weakstreams.com and istream2watch.com became inaccessible.
Most of these sites have millions of monthly visitors looking to stream sports content for free. That is not an option today. Instead, visitors are greeted by a seizure banner, displaying the seals of US law enforcement teams.
โThis domain name has been seized by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) pursuant to an order issued by the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, the banner reads, warning that violators risk from being criminally prosecuted.
It is not immediately clear if the seizures were made through domain registrars, which include at least one foreign company, or Verisign's domain registrar. However, the latter seems more plausible since Verisign monitors .com and .cc domains.
seizedservers.com
The domain name servers were pointing to SEIZEDSERVERS.COM. These name servers are controlled by the US Department of Justice and are often used to close sites as part of a criminal proceeding. The same thing happened to several Z library domain names last month.
The domain seizures have not been officially confirmed, but it appears to be a coordinated attack on sports streaming sites. TorrentFreak contacted the Department of Justice and the IPR Center, but did not receive immediate responses.
It is unknown if anyone has been arrested, as seen recently in the Library Z crackdown. There are also no immediate signs that any servers have gone offline.
Domain name change
The seizures are undoubtedly a huge blow to the sites, most of which have millions of monthly hits, but it's unclear if they'll stay offline.
Stream2watch, for example, has already moved to a new domain name at istream2watch.stream and remains accessible. Other sites may also attempt similar returns.
This is not the first time that US authorities have cracked down on sports hacking sites. In fact, one of the first rounds of domain seizures, back in 2012, was aimed at various popular sports streaming sites and was specifically timed around the Super Bowl.
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This is a breaking story and this article will be updated with any new information.
