This Is Why You Should Stay Away from Pirated Games | Free Antivirus

The story of a young man who was surprised by malware while downloading a pirated copy. In this post, we explain why this scenario occurs more and more frequently.

Brandon has made up his mind for the upcoming weekend to spend his days off playing a computer game of his choice - free of charge "of course". Since he is no longer a novice in this field, he even knows where pirated computer games are available for free download (without SMS or registration). The Internet is teeming with websites with slogans like "Download pirated games for free and virus-free."

Of course, game developers have not fallen on their heads either and have now found several methods to declare war on pirates. But for every clever developer, there is certainly a  cybercriminal who can somehow bypass their tricks, upload a crack and share it online so that other users can continue to benefit from free games.

In our case, Brandon even knows the name of the necessary crack and enters it on Google, along with the name of his dream game. And as is so often the case, Brandon is not disappointed. The only problem: among the numerous search results, he cannot find a single familiar website with pirated games and cracks. Anyway - the main thing is that he even found the crack.

All discussion forum sites - Google Groups, Zendesk, Yahoo !, Answers, and many others - come in handy in such cases and tend to be displayed above the actual search results by Google as they are very likely to answer general interest user queries. Of course, even before Brandon, someone was interested in getting the crack of the questionable computer game; luckily, a really courteous user has already posted a link to a piracy site where you can find the game and crack.

So Brandon mentally thanks the user opens the website and quickly finds what he is looking for a download link. He will download all the necessary archives, install the game and run the crack according to the instructions provided.

The crack seems to be working, but for some inexplicable reason, the game still requires activation. Brandon swears softly (and loudly) and searches online for a new crack to add to the game. In the meantime, the ransomware, which previously downloaded itself under the guise of an alleged crack download, is encrypting the files on his hard drive and preparing to send out a ransom note.

 

Cracks Full of Viruses

It is definitely not news that when pirated products are used, malware often comes with them. Those who were successful in downloading pirated software in times when the protection was still much weaker may still remember how their anti-virus protection would generate a Trojan horse warning every time a crack was executed.

Hackers who crack games for work have to make a living like everyone else, and they mostly do that by turning users' computers into bots or homes for banking Trojans. The chances of downloading a free game without a virus have always been very slim. Recently, however, the likelihood of downloading malware instead of a crack has skyrocketed.

According to an article on  Torrentfreak, scammers recently launched a major campaign to promote websites that contain malware.

It works like this: Scammers actively distribute links to their malicious websites through public and well-known websites such as Google Groups, Facebook Events Calendar, Zendesk, and many others. They provide them with links to download alleged cracks and pirated games and create tailor-made how-to guides.

Those malicious links then point to a data storage page and instead of the promised crack, it just downloads a malware installer. Users who have got used to the fact that their AV solution identifies a Trojan horse when installing a game usually ignore or even deactivate their virus protection so that they can download and install the file in peace.

Malicious Piracy Sites Ban “good” Sites from Google

What's even more interesting is that scammers claiming to be well-known publishers like Valve or Ubisoft have started bombarding Google with complaints under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) about "solid" websites with pirated games - as "solid" apply to sites that do not distribute malware.

Also, these are not ordinary complaints about violations of copyright, but rather complaints about bypassing the DRM protection of the respective website and, unlike ordinary complaints, the accused sites cannot contest the decision.

Google just follows its rules and removes the "good" piracy sites from the search results. This means that the “bad” sites that distribute malware under the guise of cracked games are listed significantly higher up. This in turn means that users looking for free software visit these sites more often and download more (or only) viruses on average.

How to Avoid Infection

One piece of advice to avoid malware infection comes first:

• Please do not use pirated copies! Buy games and software only in official stores. If you really want to save, wait for the next sale - there are often discounts of up to 90%.

Strangely enough, I have a premonition that the Brandons of this world will not heed this well-intentioned advice in the future either. So here are a few cybersecurity tips for those who still can't do without piracy.

• Avoid ominous piracy sites. Large torrent trackers with many moderators are less likely to catch a virus than strange resources that appeared only six months ago.
• Install a reliable AV solution and do not disable it under any circumstances. The programs don't scream “malware” at the top of their throats for nothing - no piracy site (no, even “good”) can give you a 100% guarantee that a free game will not contain a virus.

You don't have to rob a bank for a good virus protection - we offer, for example, a first-class AV solution that can be downloaded free of charge: Protegent Free Antivirus. Whatever you do, you won't become one of those geniuses (irony off) who download pirated antivirus software and catch yourself a trojan instead.