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'Bonus' Episode of 'House of the Dragon' Comes With a Nasty Surprise for Pirates.
(torrentfreak.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
98 points (97.1% liked)
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The torrent was titled as .mkv (normal and expected) but the actual file was .lnk (not normal)... so you would have had to open a weird random .lnk file to activate the trojan?
Windows hides extensions by default.
Unhiding extensions is one of the first things I do when setting up windows, but it will still hide the .lnk extension on shortcuts, so it's still a vector for phishing attacks (specifically, tricking the user to do something that runs malicious code).
Experienced pirates will get into the habit of taking precautions against malware attacks and will distrust downloads until they are sufficiently vetted,
Unhiding extensions wouldn't help here, as the .lnk extension is hidden even if you unhide the others, as it's the extension for shortcut files; you have to edit an obscure registry key if you want to unhide it.
(That said, it being a shortcut it should have the small shortcut arrow in the icon, unless you've used a third party tool or the registry to disable it, so it should still be easily recognisable as a shortcut.)
The comments from obvious teenagers on 1337x on pretty much every torrent suggests that a lot of people do this
Basic computer usage skill level does seem to be in decline, doesn't it lol.
Operating a computer used to be a specialized skill, you used to have to look under the hood pretty often to make things work. Now all that prep work is taken care of for you, so end users are further away from the partial techs we all used to be.
Dropping into a DOS command line to install software was a normal thing in Windows 95, now if you pull up a command line people think you're a Microsoft Certified Technowizard™.
I believe the torrent included both an .mkv and a malicious .lnk file.
.lnk files are dangerous because they can evade detection and automatically open other files or executable on a computer; AFAIK you would not have had to open the .lnk file yourself.
Wait, what? A .lnk file is a shortcut... you still have to click those for them to open whatever they're pointing to.
It depends on the attack vector. Typically you're right, but malicious .lnk files are often paired with other malicious methods to infect machines. Sometimes they're configured as a worm that copies and spreads when a flash drive is connected, sometimes they're configured to download a remote payload when another script or program is started. The problem is that it's a type of file that's often overlooked because it seems innocent.
It isn't necessarily the case that the Trojan needs to be interacted with by the user in order to execute the malicious code. Just having the file on your machine opens the door for all kinds of attacks (especially if you're using a headless setup: you wouldn't necessarily know you have the .lnk file in the system unless you're manually unpacking your downloads yourself). All it needs is for another piece of infected code to run and look for that file, and it can open the door for more traditional malicious code.
Edit: just as a for-instance - If I was a black hat and wanted to spread some malicious code, I could include this .lnk file in a torrent (innocuous enough to slip by unnoticed by most people/unscrupulous pirates), and then maybe place a line of code in a jellyfin plugin or script that looks for that file and executes it if it's found. Because the attack isn't buried in the plugin or script itself (most people wouldn't think much of a line of code that's simply pointing to temp file already on your system), it could theoretically go unnoticed for long enough to catch a few hundred or thousand machines.
I wonder if an automated setup would play it without caring about the extension. If someone had something like Sonarr dropping episodes on a Plex drive, for example.