How likely is it to download malware with pirated movies?
As in title. What's your experience with it? If something isn't executable, then it has to exploit vulnerability in order to run anything malicious. But does it happen often with mp4, mkv and other files like mp3 or epub?
I assume that if I use updated linux, then I'm mostly safe?
But does it happen often with mp4, mkv and other files like mp3 or epub?
Typically is not possible. Those media files are basically just data files (e.g. like a .txt text file) so media players normally do not look for anything to execute inside them. And frankly people should avoid any media player attempting to execute random code found in media files.
It’s not about a media player ‘attempting to execute random code’ - an exploit is found which lets it run a command that it shouldn’t. You used to be able to jailbreak phones by loading a .pdf file that used an exploit to gain root privileges and execute code. It wasn’t a feature of the PDF reader. It was a bug that could be exploited when a specific string of characters was entered to effectively crash the pdf reader and let it run its own code instead.
A txt could easily contain malware - any file could.
PDF is a complicated format, and the hacking vectors are often thanks to embedded javascript, or vulnerabilities in the parsing libraries.
'avi' is technically a container format, kind of like 'zip', it can contain more than video/audio.
That said, I've been pirating movies since the mid 1990's and haven't gotten hacked through a .avi/.mkv/etc. The 'bad stuff' was always in a obvious .exe/.bat or some sort of executable, but sometimes named to exploit people, eg 'foomovie.avi.exe'.
If in doubt, run your videos using mplayer on Linux and not on Windows, most of that stuff tends to target the easier to exploit and more commonly deployed systems, eg Windows.
More likely is a specific file-naming trick that lets you use right-to-left writing to make a file look like something it's not. When it's written backwards, you can make iva.scr look like rcs.avi, and the target will just think it's a video file when it's actually an executable. If you're not paying attention, you may not notice that Windows Explorer shows a .avi extension but lists the file as an executable. Hell, if you open the file directly from your torrent app, it may not even list the file type at all. In effect, it's not hiding a payload in a video file, just disguising the payload as a video file.
I assume that if I use updated linux, then I'm mostly safe?
I don't know why Linux users think they're completely immune to malware. Yes it's very unlikely that something gains root access if you run it without super-user privileges, but that program can still access your home folder and look at all your private data.
To my knowledge, Ive never downloaded any malware from a pirated movies/music/books. The possibility is always there when downloading from unverified sources. That said if you stuck to the sites listed in the wiki you should be fine.
it's almost impossible that some state sponsored attacker will waste a 0day to attack random people downloading the latest movie from torrent. And when it happens all the news will talk about it
State sponsored hackers are a very small percentage of the threat actors out there. Also - they don't need to exploit a zero day if you are willingly launching something on your machine.
As far as anyone knows there is no way to put malicious code in a video file. What you should be worrying about is how you get those files.
If you're torrenting then you have to worry about copyright trolls contacting your ISP. If you're using file-hosting websites just vet your downloads and make sure you don't run any sketchy executable files. And it should go without saying, but don't escalate privileges for unknown programs.
Not entirely true as you can put malicious code in anything. The bigger question is whether or not your video player is susceptible to that type of attack. I would say the likelihood is low but not impossible. The best defense would be to make sure whatever video player you do use is fully up to date.
I don't think I've seen malware associated with video content since the Limewire days. I think the closest I'm aware of in recent memory was some talk of malware coming out of some of the "fake" Pirate Bay proxies, but even then I'm not sure it was associated with video.
Any halfway respectable tracker public or private you should be fine.
I had dodged stuff before when I downloaded software, I’d be weary of anything you give permission to run on your pc. But for movies and music etc, I check what files I’m getting. While this doesn’t eliminate the risk of malware cased in a .mkv, I only download on a Linux VM, and usually first open on MacOS.