Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Malware is all over file-sharing reveals new report

Dan Isacsson
By

one in three torrent malware identity theft
Chaliya Kongsrinang/123RF.com
Staying on top of the digital game isn’t always easy, especially if you only use your digital devices for communication or recreational purposes. “Beware of the virus” is stuck on repeat somewhere in the back of our heads while we’re surfing online. For those who log a pirate visit every once in a while, a report commissioned by Digital Citizens Alliance for RiskIQ put some of the online threats on display.

According to the report, users are 28 times more likely to contract malware from torrent sites than they are from mainstream websites or licensed content providers. The study used a sample of 800 sites that distribute copyrighted movies and television shows. One-third of websites with stolen content contained malware and a staggering 45 percent required but a single page-visit from you to cause the malware to download itself onto your computer.

Recommended Videos

Trojans comprised 54 percent of the total malware found, with 29 percent being adware, and with toolbars at 5 percent, and botnets at 3 percent. The rest were labeled as “other.”

Related

Not everyone knows how malware distribution in the underground community works, but the report gives us a small glimpse of what’s going on behind the scenes. Criminal organizations will contact different content theft sites, such as hosts of torrent files, and pay them to host their malware through advertisements. In a worst case scenario, you’ll find yourself the victim of ransomware. As its name implies, this malware takes control of your files and encrypts them. Unless you pay a ransom that usually lands somewhere between $100 to $500 you won’t have access to your files again. The FBI says that 18 million dollars was lost to ransomware in June of this year alone.

According to the Google Transparency Report, there were 4,865 sites with 1,000 or more copyright-infringing URL removal requests. Using these as a basis, RiskIQ has estimated that the pirate site owners have achieved a total annual revenue of $70 million from malware. But that’s hardly an impressive number when The Department of Justice claims that identity theft cost US consumers $25.7 billion in 2012. Malware, including all its various forms, made up $2.3 billion of that total.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Dan Isacsson
Dan Isacsson
Contributor
Being a gamer since the age of three, Dan took an interest in mobile gaming back in 2009. Since then he's been digging ever…
Hackers can now sneak malware into the GIFs you share
A video call in progress on Microsoft Teams.

How low will malware go to get onto your device? We thought using Minecraft to gain access to your computer was the most nefarious method hackers have produced, but there's a new, even lower type of attack that uses Microsoft Teams and GIFs to mount phishing attacks on your computer.

The new attack is called GIFShell and it installs malware on your computer to steal data. It does so by sneaking itself into innocent-looking GIFs and then waiting for you to share the GIF with your colleagues via Microsoft Teams.

Read more
Malware has a terrible new way to get to your computer
A villager looks at a sunset.

You've heard of malware spreading through spammy emails and mysterious links on strange websites. But now there's a new avenue of attack for bad actors to take -- and it's via Minecraft. Yes, you read it correctly. The open-world building game loved by seven-year-olds around the globe is quickly becoming a favorite method for spreading malware.

As reported by Bleeping Computer, Kaspersky Labs researched the phenomena from July 2021 until July 2022, and it found that in-game malware accounted for a significant amount of the malware that was spread in that time. Although there was a 30% drop in malware attacks in that year when compared to 2020, the amount of gaming-related malware actually increased. Minecraft on PC was the preferred vector.

Read more
Oh great, new malware lets hackers hijack your Wi-Fi router
The Linksys Hydra 6 dual-band mesh WiFi 6 router.

As if you didn't already have enough to worry about, a new report finds hackers are targeting home Wi-Fi routers to gain access to all your connected devices.

The report comes from Black Lotus Lab, a security division of Lumen Technologies. The report details several observed real-world attacks on small home/home office (SOHO) routers since 2020 when millions of people began working from home at the start of the COVID 19 pandemic.

Read more