How do you validate that what you torrented is clean/no malware/spyware? Specifically, I torrented two things:
- Astute Graphics Plug-ins Elite Bundle 3.9.1.7z from teamos. *It is 678MB so I can’t upload to Virustotal
- Master Collection 2025 from uztracker (which is listed on monkrus’s website’s list of trackers). It is 37.5GB so I can’t upload to Virustotal.
I’m not sure what I should to do to be honest.
Edit: Would splitting the 37.5GB file into 650MB pieces and then scanning with virustotal help? Not sure if downloaded files need to be whole for it to work properly.
This is the results from virustotal (I could only scan 4 files in the master collection without running the iso)
Thank you.
Run it inside a VM? If you’re suspicious or just worried, this would resolve most if not all of possible worries you may have.
How would I know if there was hidden spyware/malware if I ran it in a VM? (if they are smart they try to be undetected)
You don’t, but if someone figured out how to do a VM escape surely they would have bigger aspirations than some random torrent
I mean yeah that makes sense, but I don’t know enough about torrenting (nor tech in general) to know if something is safe/trustworthy sadly… I feel like I’m probably better off spending several hundreds on a subscription, than more likely than not be hacked/get advanced spyware. I doubt they wouldn’t prey on dumb people like me if it is easy. If I was more knowledgeable it would probably be possible to manually remove infected bits of a torrented file to make it work, but idk.
If you find torrenting and running a VM too technical, I’m sorry to say you’re better off not trying to identify and remove any malicious code.
Don’t put yourself down and waste your money, you can get over the learning curve for this, it’s not that steep.
To elaborate, as the previous reply stated, running the cracked programs inside a virtual machine allows you to isolate an environment specifically for this usage. Configured properly (another reply went into more detail here), even if the cracked software has something malicious, it can’t harm you. So you can safely ignore wether there’s a virus or not.
Thank you for the info, and for the encouragement. Yeah I am definitely going to try using a VM to diagnose the files more closely. To confirm, is a VM, (such as Hyper-V) similar to Windows Sandbox, where it effectively resets itself (new slate) each time you open it? Or can I install the torrented files in the VM and still access it if I close and reopen the VM in the future?
Also, which VM would you suggest? I apologize for appending so many questions to my original post.
Honestly, the safest move is to keep these files totally separate from your personal stuff. Running them in a VM or dedicated hardware is really the only way to avoid getting hacked.
What about installing some antivirus than can scan on demand?
I don’t know how’s the “market” right now, but a few years ago Malwarebytes was good for Windows, and ClamAV in Linux
I ran my antivirus on the plugins.zip folder and it didn’t detect anything. Then I ran it on the master collection folder, and it also didn’t detect anything, but it suspiciously finished almost immediately although it does only contain the iso (37.5GB), .info file (2.46KB), .sha (85B), .md5 (77B), so I’m not sure. Also, I just posted the virustotal results in this thread.
It it incredibly difficult to vet with 100% certainty that a binary you run it safe. If you have the source code, its so much easier. As others have said, the best way in piracy to be safe is downloading from a reputable source. Monkrus is pretty good. I am assuming you’re referring to the Adobe master collection? If so, GenP is excellent (and open source).
If you are on windows, one thing you can do is run any programs in sandboxie and see what it writes to the disc. If it tries to edit things that it shouldn’t like the registry or parts of the os that would be a red flag.
You could also setup firewall rules to block the application from accessing the internet. I am on macOS so I use a program called little snitch (lulu by objective see is also good). I am not familiar with the windows side of things. But essentially what I do is block the program and any processes it starts.
If you want to learn more about malware, https://objective-see.org/ is a great resource. It’s macOS focused however but I’ve learned a ton from it. In particular their book on mac malware teaches a lot of analysis techniques.