Not sure if this fits here…
An OPSEC community would probably say no, so I probably don’t need to ask in those communities. But I’m curious about a (digital) pirate’s perspective on this issue…
I mean, the sources listed here are supposedly “safe” right? But honestly, how much would you trust these “safe” sources?
When doing sensitive tasks like banking or filing taxes, do you:
- Use a different OS on the same machine? (Dualboot)
- Or put the pirated content inside a virtual machine?
- Or just use a completely separate computer?
And since PC is much different than a Smartphone:
- Would the extra sandboxing on Smartphones make pirating games on a Smartphone much safer compared to on a PC? (Not that there are much mobile games worth playing, just curious)
(PC in this context referring to all personal computers, regardless of OS)
And last question:
- Non-installed/non-executable files such as .mp4 .mkv .mp3 .pdf .epub, are mostly safe right? I mean, you are using another program to opening it, not executing a file, there aren’t much attack vectors as long as the video player / ebook viewer is up to date right? (Or am I understanding it wrong?)
Let’s not be fooled by memes and buzz. Crackers don’t crack it to infect your computer and make money. They do it to le t others play the game. They benefit by getting to play some other game someone else has cracked and distributing. And maybe they enjoy it as it’s challenging. Cracking isn’t about infecting people’s computers. When some pirated game comes with some ransomware or trojan injected, probably it’s been done by someone else whose passion is totally different than that of the cracker. They take the crack, modify it and then redistribute it malware injected. So, maybe, by downloading popular torrents, I mean if you make sure it comes directly from the cracker group, you can avoid malware except the spyware the game manufacturer has put into it, of course.