‘Excessive’ consumer abuse leads AnonFiles operators to close down internet hosting service

Well-liked on-line file internet hosting platform AnonFiles has shut down, with directors saying they have been fed up with “the intense volumes” of abuse of its providers.

Lower than every week earlier, customers stated they have been having bother importing paperwork to AnonFiles. Then, the web site stopped working altogether.

Now, as a substitute of the common interface, the positioning exhibits messages from directors on a white background.

“After attempting endlessly for 2 years to run a file-sharing website with consumer anonymity now we have been uninterested in dealing with the intense volumes of individuals abusing it and the complications it has created for us,” the message stated.

AnonFiles claims to have hosted “tens of million uploads and lots of petabytes” of knowledge. It allowed customers to share paperwork, photos, movies, and different information without cost and with out requiring them to create an account.

The web site had over 18 million month-to-month customers, in accordance with Similarweb.

Nevertheless, due to its simplicity and anonymity, Anonfiles was additionally used for sharing copyrighted materials, unlawful content material and malware. “The closure of Anonfiles will hardly be seen by anybody utilizing it for legit functions,” stated Pieter Arntz, malware intelligence researcher at Malwarebytes. “Most legit customers had already given up on the positioning as a result of abundance of aggressive promoting on the platform.”

The platform directors stated they tried to ban lots of of hundreds of malicious information robotically, however the abuse didn’t cease. In some unspecified time in the future, they did not even care in the event that they by chance deleted hundreds of information that didn’t violate any guidelines, they stated.

“This isn’t the sort of work we imagined when buying it and lately our proxy supplier shut us down,” they stated in an announcement. The admins at the moment are looking for a purchaser for the net area.

Arntz stated there could also be a brand new service that pops up that permits for nameless file sharing, however it could be provided solely to the very best bidders. “If that’s the case, it can make life a bit more durable for cybercriminals simply beginning out and to seek out the return on funding for much less worthwhile crimes.”

Again in 2021, researchers found that information downloaded from the web site may infect a tool with seven different types of malware, displaying that AnonFiles was closely compromised by unhealthy actors.

Do NOT obtain from Anonfiles!! I dont know what the fuck is up with them however they’ve been significantly compromised? Injecting malware into uploads and fuck is aware of what else

— @anonalytics June 14, 2022

Anybody could possibly be a goal. As researchers talked about earlier than, even customers of cybercrime boards can fall sufferer to infections from compromised websites.

On Twitter and Reddit, customers sadly stated goodbye to the service, praising its reliability and ease. Now they’re on the lookout for alternate options.

For cybercrime analysts, this can be a improvement value monitoring. The quantity of combolists, infostealer logs, and database breaches that have been hosted on Anonfiles was an enormous supply of stolen credential knowledge. Anticipate to see a wider shift to Mega, Add[.]ee, and different providers. https://t.co/Xm4BIIlZwZ

— Alexander Leslie (@aejleslie) August 16, 2023

AnonFiles, the nameless file add and sharing web site, has determined to name it a quits at the moment. When making an attempt to go to their web site you might be greeted with a farewell message.

Thanks in your service, AnonFiles. It was a helluva web site.

Data by way of @g0njxa pic.twitter.com/SBkssAs0Rg

— vx-underground (@vxunderground) August 16, 2023