The 'MovieReaper' malware has infected hundreds of users, according to antivirus provider Kaspersky, which traced the attack to iTorrents.org, a site that appears to be compromised.

If you run an exe expecting it to be a movie you kind of deserve it.

if the site is compromised, the hackers wouldn't need to use .exe

just visiting the site would be enough to get infected, potentially

or even clicking on an itorrents link from 1337x, cuz the latter doesn't host their own torrent files

Sure except they did use a .exe. The article states the expected .torrent was being replaced with a .torrent that downloads an 865 MB .exe file.

Well if visiting a (compromised) site can get you infected the problem is not the site, but your browser, right?

windows hides file extensions by default.

So unhide them? It will still say Application under type. I’m not going to defend Microsoft doing that but it’s not like it’s a new thing or it’s hard to fix.

That kind of browser exploit isn't cheap and this is not the way that it is likely to get used.

I still don't get why this is the default, and why people don't change it when they install. It's been a detriment of the OS since day one, and changing that one thing alone probably could have saved so many people over the decades.

It would be a kinder world if ignorance wasn't exploited / punished.

But, yeah. It's not like malware in movies was the first time that ignorance would be very much the opposite of bliss. Plenty of berries that will give you a bad time if you ignorantly eat them; and some plants (and animals) even use mimicry take advantage of the lack of observation or knowledge.

"deserve" might not be the way I'd put it, but you execute enough movies and bad things will happen to you.

I've gotten infections from payloads hidden in MP4 metadata before. It doesn't have to be an exe.

Sure, but this isn’t geochemistry it’s the most popular desktop OS in the world that the person in this scenario ostensibly owns and uses. In addition, they’re using it for the famously risky practice of piracy so you’d expect a modicum of caution.

DOS making file extensions a fundamental part of their filesystem just to hide them by default in windows is some good irony.

You've never ever played tech support for a relative. I can tell.

I absolutely have, and if they infected themselves with The.Odyssey.2026.1080p.AMZN.WEBDL.H265.exe I would absolutely make fun of them.

i know that's a figurative way of emphasizing things in a certain way. but it's better to acknowledge that both things are problems.

fair enough.

although the apparent goal of a hack can also be an obfuscation of the true goal which may be more worthy of expense.

whatever though. i accept the community feels I'm overreacting.

fwiw I've always avoided .exe in torrents. maybe why i thought that was a basic b level safety warning.

Thats not very nice of you

Can’t argue that, but hopefully it’d be motivation for them to look at what they’re opening.

Avoiding executables from untrusted sources is pretty reasonable.

You can change it??

I think it's in the view menu, or in folder options somewhere. I only really use Windows at work these days so I can't check it right now. But yeah, you can turn on extensions. It used to be one of the first things I did on a Windows install.

even so, I would think this could be easily countered with a small bit of configuration in modern versions of qbittorrent for most users.

like this for example:

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/75665493/28875544

payloads hidden in MP4 metadata

interesting. i wasn't aware that was a thing.

any clue how that works? like if it targets specific video players like vlc or something?

in my head, i was just thinking that if that was the case, then on linux it might make sense for me to start using flatpak version of vlc (or use bwrap/firejail container on it).

edit: for anyone else interested in this, there are apparently a bunch of articles about it online. here's one if you're too lazy to look for yourself:

https://cloudmersive.com/article/How-Malicious-MP4-Files-Threaten-Security-and-Reputation

from the several articles I skimmed, it seems like it is more common to embed a batch or powershell script and target windows users, so being on Linux might help in terms of not being in the primary target demographic. But there was mention of buffer overflow techniques and such so it sounds like it really is kind of random.

And sometimes its not even technically malware but basically steganography. like the article mentioned this:

Finally, the possibility of hidden NSFW content (including CSAM and other extremely sinister illegal media) within video files can’t be ignored.

That last part would actually bother me a LOT more than some windows-specific malware on my non-windows systems. I might have to start running my pirated media thru ffmpeg / etc and having it remove any metadata I don't specifically whitelist by field and data type... at least for the stuff that doesnt come from well known release groups on popular sites.

appreciate you calling this out, PabloSexcrowbar