I’m seeing thepiratebay org is discouraged because it has lots of viruses due to lack of moderation. I was wondering how could an mp4 or an mkv etc. could be harmful? Are people talking about executable stuff?

  • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
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    1 day ago

    I think the piratebay is fine. I haven’t seen anything mal on piratebay in years, and I think the last mal download I saw then was a basic the video itself is the text “go to http://malware.ru/payload/virus to download the codec for this totally legit file” not like, state actor polymorphic virus shit. For an mkv/mp4 itself to actually do anything, it would need to memory overflow the player (which could be mitigated in several ways) and that’s a heavy engineering lift to use to do much on a modern OS (and would be specific to one OS/version/hardware situation). A criminal organization or state actor bothering to develop something like that isn’t going to put it on piratebay to be downloaded by 10000 randos globally, they’d put it on the public web, or target it to specific high value targets.

    • z500@startrek.website
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      1 day ago

      It’s usually fine, but I download new TV shows automatically and I got a .exe instead of the new Frasier. I don’t think I’ll be downloading an actual .exe from TPB in the future lol

      • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
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        1 day ago

        I find TPB is best for old music, and one off random old things, – new TV, I recommend just always waiting for season packs on sites that offer full season packs and just living a few months behind. Must see GoT-style water cooler TV is mostly dead anyway.