According to a tweet by F-Secure's Chief Security Officer, Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij and former site spokesman Peter Sunde have reportedly been "stopped" in Bangkok. They were apparently on their way to give a talk at this year's Hack in the Box Security Conference in Malaysia but never arrived. TorrentFreak has spoken with the duo and has discovered the reasons behind their no-show. Sunde says it's "messy".

The very first Hack in the Box (HiTB) conference was held at the the Cititel Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, in 2003. This year the event is back in Malaysia, promising exciting security-related discussion supported by some of the world’s biggest tech companies.

The list of sponsors is impressive – Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Blackberry, Panda, F-Secure, not to mention the official ‘friends’ of the event such as Kim Dotcom and the Chaos Computer Club.

HITBSecConf2012 promised to bring back some of the most popular speakers of the last 10 years including John ‘Captain Crunch’ Draper the ‘phone phreak‘ who became a legend in the hacking community.

Also due to appear were Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij and former site spokesman Peter Sunde. They were due to give a speech titled “Data is Political”.

However, their 3:00pm speech slot came and went leaving conference attendees wondering what had happened to the duo.

Then came a worrying Tweet from F-Secure’s Chief Security Officer Mikko H. Hypponen.

“The Pirate Bay founders Peter ‘brokep’ Sunde and Fredrik ‘tiamo’ Neij were stopped in Bangkok on their way to #HITB2012KUL. Talk canceled,” he wrote.

The use of the word “stopped” suggested that something untoward may have happened and perhaps understandably news articles started to appear questioning Fredrik and Peter’s whereabouts and circumstances.

“All we know is they didn’t show up,” said Mei Ling Foo, a Hack in the Box coordinator, quoted by ComputerWorld.

However, a little while ago TorrentFreak managed to speak with both Fredrik and Peter. Were they lost, or in trouble? Both? Not exactly.

“I just couldn’t show since I’m home sick puking my ass off after picking up a bad stomach virus a few days ago,” Peter told us, adding that he’s been “totally out of it” since his last plane ride home (he was recently in Lebanon) which “was a mess.”

We also managed to speak to Fredrik who confirmed that neither he nor Peter had been anywhere near Bangkok and had not been “stopped” or otherwise. His no-show was due to concern over travel documents.

A few months ago the Embassy of Sweden in Bangkok revoked Fredrik’s passport, a decision the Pirate Bay co-founder appealed in August. Last week it was revealed that his appeal had been successful.

But with all this happening just a few days ago Fredrik just wasn’t confident enough to make the trip to his speech today at Hack in the Box, so decided to stay back at base until more time had passed.

Sickness and travel issues aside, considering the treatment received by Gottfrid Svartholm at the hands of Cambodian authorities recently, one can’t help but consider the potential risks of Peter and Fredrik turning up at a high-profile event such as Hack in the Box anyway.

An unexpected stomach churner and a “messy” flight is much preferable to the alternative whichever way you look at it, even if it does leave Captain Crunch with another 30 mins to fill and Lebanon airlines with extra cleaning duties.

Update: Mikko informed TorrentFreak that the information he tweeted came from HITB.

“I was just repeating what the HITB host announced to the roomful of people who were waiting for TPB talk to start.”