![](\"http:\/\/www.opensource.im\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/b8596b6f08aes.png-150x6.png\")
<\/p><\/p>
Reverse countdown: A digital clock at thepiratebay.se marks the amount of time since The Pirate Bay has been out of action. Photo: Screenshot: thepiratebay.se <\/p>
Renegade torrent site The Pirate Bay has added a digital clock and a line of scrambled text, which may be an encryption key, to its website at thepiratebay.se. <\/p>
On Monday the site, shut down by Swedish police on December 9, showed the first signs of a potential resurrection when it added a looping video of a black pirate flag. <\/p>
Now a digital clock has been added, showing roughly the amount of time the site has not been available to search for pirated files 14 days and counting. <\/p>
Another addition is a line of jumbled characters at the bottom of the screen: \"JyO7wNzc8xht47QKWohfDVj6Sc2qH+X5tBCT+uetocIJcjQnp\/2f1ViEBR+ty0Cz\". <\/p>
Advertisement <\/p>
Exactly what it means (if anything), or what it's doing there, is anyone's guess. <\/p>
The URL of the image of the text is \"http:\/\/thepiratebay.se\/aes.png\", which may be a referenceto Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). <\/p>
AES is aninternationally agreed-upon standard for encrypting transactions, and is widely used by secure websites such as online banking services, among other things. <\/p>
If this is an AES key, one theory is that it could be a way for people involved with The Pirate Bay to communicate with each other, or send data including pirated material privately. <\/p>
<\/p>
<\/p>