Did You Pirate Watch_Dogs? You May Be Mining Bitcoins For Someone!

Piracy isn’t exactly the best way to get what you want, especially since there are often extra risks involved with downloading things illegally. First is the obvious legal implications and the second is that many of the sites are often less than safe themselves, leaving you at risk of downloading viruses and other unwanted software. One uploader obviously knows this and has taken the opportunity to turn some extra profit from the piracy scene.

Posts have started appearing on TPB that a pirate copy of the Watch_Dogs is being circulated, that does actually contain the game, but also comes loaded with a few extra files, the most important of which being the sneakily named winlogin.exe, very similar to winlogon.exe, a genuine Windows service.

Turns out this sneaky file is a crypto currency mining app, which is using peoples hardware to mine a currency, most likely BitCoin or LiteCoin for the person who created the upload, effectively letting him steal from the people who are stealing the latest Ubisoft title.

It’s a little ironic really, and it’s not like the people involved have a legal fight here, but it’s certainly a great example of why piracy can be a gamble.

Thank you Reddit for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Reddit.