You should never pirate games or software in general, that is something that we all know. There are those who can’t resist that temptation now and the, but it can end very badly and end up costing you a lot more than just purchasing the game straight away. That was a lesson that was learned by Redditor arkanoah as he discovered that 4.88 BitCoin went missing from his wallet.
He took his problem to Reddit in order to try to figure out where his missing BitCoin were and how they got missing. Other Redditors were quick to notice the time of disappearance, November 11th, which coincides with the time that Fallout 4 was released. Asking the question if he had pirated that or another game was answered with yes and that’s most likely the way his BitCoin were stolen.
Cracked software is risky to download as it often contains malware in one form or another and it is the most likely scenario that this is the way that the 4.88 BitCoin went missing. The user originally scanned his download with antivirus software and later the system with Malwarebytes and GMER which both returned zero infections. So whether the attacker cleaned his tracks after downloading and cracking arkanoah’s BitCoin wallet or the mechanism used is so sophisticated that it isn’t being detected is up to everyone’s own guess, we most likely won’t find out. It is however most likely that the perpetrator cleaned his tracks before leaving the victim’s computer.
At the time, the 4.88 BitCoin were worth $1773, quite a bit more than the game would have cost him on Steam or other platforms. Lesson learned, I hope.
well it wouldn’t surprise me if that sting was set-up by the publishers/devs in order to teach them a lesson
(I know that this is not the case, it was a joke).
lol, get rekt XD
I’ve got a friend that torrents his games, but I’ve got a strict policy of not torrenting software. If you like a business you should support it instead of steal from it; even if you don’t feel morally obligated, maybe you’ll see that the risk outweighs the benefit.
Horse shit, he was robbed from his online wallet not the game. Let’s all use some common sense. If MTGox can be hacked and cleaned out of a lot more than some chode can be hacked. Why would you say it was a game? Release groups do not do that shit, they kinda like a solid reputation. All this article is, is click bait with no facts just BS speculation based on nothing.
It is easy to inject your own coding into a cracked .exe and repackage the whole game and share wherever you like. It has happened a few times with “release” groups, where someone was rebuilding a binary and it was infected due to their own PC being infected.
Or by someone who grabbed an ISO grabbed the .exe, injected their own malicious stuff, repacked and stuck on the pirate bay etc.
Anyhoo, it isn’t uncommon if the game was got from a source not 100% reliable. Although warez groups don’t try to infect anyone, the chance still exists.
As for robbed from his wallet, of course he was, that is where the bitcoins sit, but how was it robbed is the question. And an infected .exe which roots their own binary to mine for bitcoin information is good enough to do that.
Somebody could easily copy a torrent, infect one of the executables with an undetectable peice of malware and make it look like the original release. Next they would use their botnet to seed the torrent and push it up to the top of all the torrent sites, this is to make it look more legitimate and also to get more traffic – because being at the top of search results = safe, right?
That’s why you should only download release group torrents from the official verified release group profile…
Torrents are are great but you have to at least use some common sense to know the difference between normally used file types and trackers and unusual ones. I didn’t download a torrent for Fallout 4 because Bethesda makes some damn good games and deserves their money, but I usually download torrents so that I can try before I buy. Especially when it comes to publishers like Ubisoft and EA who often release piles of garbage and label them as a game, you should try before you buy or else you are pretty much a sucker. Just make sure you understand what you are downloading and use trusted sites, trackers, etc.
And thats what you get when you are not experienced with the seedy underground world of torrenting, probably got some dodgy version from a non reputable source. The real lesson here is, kids need to double and triple check that what they are getting is safe.