Excited to see the new Spider-Man movie? Sadly, this latest MCU movie will not arrive in the Philippines until early next year. Now you’re thinking of downloading a pirated copy online. Well, before you do, check out this latest news.
Cybersecurity researchers from ReasonLabs found out that pirated copies of the latest Spider-Man: No Way Home movie that are distributed on torrent websites comes with mining malware.
It’s said that the malware can divert the computer to mine the “privacy coin” called Monero.
There’s a file piggybacking on the torrent file called “spiderman_net_putidomoi.torrent.exe”. The word “net putidomoi” is translated to “no way home” from Russian, which hints that it’s “most likely from a Russian torrenting website”, as per the cybersecurity firm.
Related:
- Movie studios want VPN providers to record user data, disconnect pirates
- Hackers are using cheap, free Windows activators to steal crypto wallets
It’s said that the crypto mining malware is adding exclusions to the Windows Defender antivirus software then builds a “watchdog process” for it to work. Once clear, the malware starts two new process: Sihost64.exe and WR64.exe. It will then launch XMrig, which is an open-source Monero miner.
While the malware doesn’t steal any personal or sensitive information from the user, the fact that it makes the computer mine for crypto means that the CPU usage increases, which then results in system slowdown and higher electricity consumption.
ReasonLabs advised users to take “extra caution when downloading content of any kind from non-official sources – whether it’s a document in an email from an unknown sender, a cracked program from a fishy download portal, or a file from a torrent download.”
Via: Decrypt