How to see what other torrent users are downloading

Through BitTorrent, it is possible to download every type of files: movies, TV shows, songs, software and games. Unfortunately, the freedom and the ease of downloading desired content could pose serious risks for unaware users. They often get infected with malicious code hidden behind a torrent. Everyone who wants to download media from the BitTorrent infrastructure has to search for the desired content using specialty search engines, the most popular one being The Pirate Bay:.

The Pirate Bay is historically the most famous and important torrent search engine, due to its history and all the legal issues it faced in the last decade.

The site has been seized and reopened many times over the years due to legal disputes with private firms and the Swedish government. However, The Pirate Bay is still alive today. The site has over 2. Each user visits 5. Other popular famous torrent search engines are x, Rarbg and LimeTorrents. However, there are many dangers for unskilled users, and it is quite easy to get in trouble. Downloaded material often includes malicious code that could deliver malware or allow crooks to carry out other dangerous activities.

The most popular game of the past year is Fortnite. It has not been officially released on the Android Market and today is still in Beta release and available only for few device models. But, despite that limitation, many users try to search for this game on illegal channels in order to download it and play on their smartphone. It presents itself as the beta version of Fortnite, but when we insert the hash of the downloaded file on VirusTotal, we have the following result:.

Reverse engineering the app, we noticed that the app requests all permissions, even the ability to access critical ones like sending and receiving SMS, camera, Bluetooth, set wallpaper, manage call, kill other applications and so on. Digging further into the analysis, we decompiled the application and studied its source code. We discovered a routine used by the malware to establish the connection with its Command and Control:. The malware is also able to intercept the incoming messages, collect them and store them in its private repository, which is sent to the server:.

How many times someone did you download from the Web? By clicking on the highlighted results, we are redirected to the following webpage where it is possible to download the torrent:. The two pages are quite similar. There is a short description of the film with a big and evident button to download the torrent file. After downloading the films, we are presented with a folder containing the movie and an executable with the Codec pack that enables the view of the movie:.

If we try to open the video without first installing the Codec Pack, an error is displayed informing us that the file is corrupted. So the user feels compelled to install the Codec Pack.

In reality, it is a well-known bot linked to a botnet already analyzed by security experts at ESET Researchers. Another category of interest for common users is commercial software. Many users search for them in the hope of downloading a pirated copy. This is the easiest method for installing malware, because the user has to install a patch is used to replace the paid license but also installs malware on the machine.

Nero is the most famous program for making optical authoring software and is a leader in the market. Figure 16 shows the description of the torrent. In the area reserved for the details of the software, there is a minimal guide to install it. However, it is immediately visible that something is suspicious: the dimension of the file is quite small.

So after downloading the file, we have the following folder on the computer:. The file size is about 15MB, and it is not much for a complex program like Nero. In fact, the installation file of the software is about hundreds of megabytes or even in the order of gigabytes.

To settle any doubts about the untrustworthiness of the program, we executed it and were shown the following window:. It is very suspicious that a Nero installer asks for the credentials of a Pirate Bay account, pretending to be an anti-bot check.

The reality is that it is a phishing program developed to steal user credentials. Indeed, uploading the file on VirusTotal platform, we have the following results:. VirusTotal also confirms that it is a form of Trojan malware. A real Nero installation asks for an installation path, key activation key and other legit information, not for the credential of an illegal service. Another widely used program is Adobe Photoshop. Created in , this software has become the de facto industry standard for image editing and post-processing.

In fact, everyone who wants to share image processing work uses the file formats defined by Adobe. For this reason, it is another attractive means to spread malware, so we decided to search for Photoshop on LimeTorrents:. We downloaded the third result. The small size led us to think to something malicious was hidden in the files.

This is just an indicator used to rapidly identify malicious files; we cannot exclude the possibility that even files with a bigger dimension could hide a tainted version of legitimate software.

The executable is once again a classical Trojan, as reported in the VirusTotal report. The good news is that the majority of antimalware solutions listed in VirusTotal are able to detect the file as malicious software. Another popular software downloaded by many users is, curiously, the popular antivirus software Malwarebytes.

However, we found a cracked version of Malwarebytes Premium online; it promises to implement all the functionalities included in the paid version.

So we searched for it on LimeTorrents, obtaining a huge amount of results:. We uploaded it on VirusTotal and discovered that it is detected as malicious adware by most antivirus solutions.

All this information is necessary to customize the advertisements and consequently to allow the adware to become more pervasive. While we were analyzing the Torrent network, we decided to dissect an interesting sample of malware related to a huge botnet spreading in the wild.

Getting caught torrenting can also force your ISP to cut off your connection to the Web. Finally, let's talk about what you want to know. Here's how to download torrents from Torrentz - the easy way:. As you can see, Torrentz2 doesn't host files on its own - it simply acts as a gateway to individual torrent websites. With that said, we think you'll also want to check the best Windows P2P clients as well as the best torrent clients for macOS , letting you download torrent files from any P2P website on the Web.

While you're here, why not learn more about downloading torrenting files? We've prepared a series of handy articles below, so feel free to take a look. We sincerely hope that you've found this article to be useful. In case you have any questions, make sure to post a comment below, and we'll do our best to respond in a timely manner.

Add a Comment. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Clear search input Search. How to Download Torrents From Torrentz. By Novak Bozovic. September 3, TechNadu does not condone illegal file-sharing or copyright infringement. Even though P2P file-sharing technology is legal, many of the files exchanged via P2P are indeed copyrighted. Uploading these copyrighted files can put you at risk of a civil lawsuit. While these lawsuits are often class-action cases, some have been targeted at individual users in an attempt to make an example of them.

A VPN will prevent your Internet provider from tracking your online activity. A VPN will unblock any website, including torrent repositories. This is especially important in countries where torrent sites are taken down regularly. Using a VPN, you can connect to a server in a different country and unblock what was previously inaccessible.

A VPN will unleash the full power of your Web connection. A VPN is an all-in-one solution! A VPN is the best and the most effective way to protect your torrenting. The Squid Game series was a smash hit for Netflix when it launched in September, starting a global craze to watch the Read more. Sports How to Watch Brooklyn Nets vs.

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