Hackers are around every corner, targeting anyone they can, including Spider-man fans. According to the latest reports, cybercriminals use the new Spider-man movie to spread Monero-mining malware to people’s computers.
Dangers of Pirated Copies
It seems that downloading a pirated copy of Spider-man: New Way Home might contain cryptocurrency mining malware. Unfortunately, the movie is already spreading out via various torrent websites.
ReasonLabs recently discovered a torrent file that most likely came from a Russian torrenting website. This file contained a self-compiled version of “xmrig,” known as a popular open-source software for mining Monero.
This malware can remain undetected in the operating system because it can set up exclusions for Microsoft Defender Antivirus scans.
While this virus won’t cause much damage to the user’s data or computer, it will drastically slow down the device since it puts its CPU under pressure to mine the cryptocurrency.
This is not the first time hackers have attempted to use pirated versions of popular movies. For example, earlier in 2021, Kaspersky found out that about 13% of streams and downloads of Marvel’s Black Widow came with malicious attempts to infect and abuse people’s devices.
While the Omicron variant makes it challenging to go watch a movie in the cinema, downloading a pirated version might turn out to also be an even worse decision.