this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025

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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Do y'all still consider the machine you run pirated software/games on to still be "Secure"? [+ Other Piracy Related Questions] (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Not sure if this fits here...

An OPSEC community would probably say no, so I probably don't need to ask in those communities. But I'm curious about a (digital) pirate's perspective on this issue...

I mean, the sources listed here are supposedly "safe" right? But honestly, how much would you trust these "safe" sources?

When doing sensitive tasks like banking or filing taxes, do you:

Use a different OS on the same machine? (Dualboot)
Or put the pirated content inside a virtual machine?
Or just use a completely separate computer?

And since PC is much different than a Smartphone:

Would the extra sandboxing on Smartphones make pirating games on a Smartphone much safer compared to on a PC? (Not that there are much mobile games worth playing, just curious)

(PC in this context referring to all personal computers, regardless of OS)

And last question:

Non-installed/non-executable files such as .mp4 .mkv .mp3 .pdf .epub, are mostly safe right? I mean, you are using another program to opening it, not executing a file, there aren't much attack vectors as long as the video player / ebook viewer is up to date right? (Or am I understanding it wrong?)

(page 2) 5 comments

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I don't know if the malware that could be in these games work on Linux, but I take my time in picking torrents and pick ones through uploaders I know

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I run a few games posted by johncena141 on 1337x, so I consider it secure enough :p

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Honestly I don’t run pirated software at all anymore. The risk is too high. If it’s a game then I’m happy to pay for it, and open source software covers pretty much everything else for me.

The only exception is switch games but they run through an emulator which is quite safe.

Most media files are safe but I’ve heard that PDFs of all files can be vectors.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

I’ve never run it because I have had zero evidence to tell me it would be safe. I do run older games in emulators up to PS2. I see no issue with that.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

I mostly just avoid running pirated software. If I have to, I run the executable bits through stuff like virustotal first. And I keep my system updated.

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