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Websites to Search Torrent Links Delivering Malware to 12m Visitors Every Month


A misconceived notion about websites used to search torrent files is that they aid in conducting piracy. While such websites are the KickAss Torrents and Pirate Bay, torrent files in reality help download heavy folders and files all over a peer-to-peer computer network while are extremely beneficial in hunting content that doesn't require a license alternatively in sharing huge folders/files amongst the PC-users.

Researchers at RiskIQ and Digital Citizens Alliance say that nearly 266 popular torrent search sites these days commonly serve malicious software to their visitors. Zdnet.com published this, December 14, 2015.

Moreover, visitors to torrent websites have 28% more chances of becoming infected with malware in contrast to visitors accessing mainstream websites alternatively services providing licensed content. This is based on a survey of 800 websites which provide copyrighted films as well as television shows. There was malware in 66% of websites having filched material while in the case of 45% websites; a visit to merely one page could cause malware installation on the users' PC.

In a process called 'malvertising,' web hackers are known to exploiting ad-networks for clandestinely serving malware onto innocent visitors. This, apart from impacting legitimate websites, facilitates in inundating torrent search portals with malevolent ads against the excuse that such websites have to depend on advertising for maintaining their popularity.

According to the survey, the clandestinely-installed malware from 33% of the ad-networks have been created for filching data to be sold for black via malvertising as well as via pulling down of copyrighted content having malware embedded onto it. When advertisements deliver malware, the users are targeted for automatically infecting them through drive-by downloads, and via fooling them into clicking web-links.

In the case of web-link clicks, fake pop-up alerts and bogus Flash updates are involved that do the trick of getting end-users to download huge malevolent payloads. Of the different payloads, Trojans accounted for 54%, adware -29%, toolbars -5%, and bonnets -3%.

Together, 12m end-users every month within USA alone contracted malware, indicating that torrent search sites serve to be one prominent attack medium to disseminate digital threats, with cyber-criminals obtaining a $70m-and-more as revenue.

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