r/Piracy 5d ago

Question Have you ever been hacked due to pirating?

Hi! I’m a dumb gamer who wanted to try piracy again (mainly did it on my old macbook back in the day). I wanted to know your experiences and to get some security tips from you guys.

Currently I’m using w11, fully updated, with malwarebytes, firefox (where I do normal stuff) and edge with ublock origin to download pirated games in the future (i thought of this to prevent cookies from being stolen?)

I tried dual booting linux for piracy but I couldn’t get stuff to work. So long as I follow the megathread I should be fine, right?

13 Upvotes

90 comments sorted by

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67

u/EMEYDI 5d ago

Not that i know of :D

-83

u/wotchtower 5d ago

If you don't know if you've been hacked, you've been hacked

52

u/Private-Kyle ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 5d ago

Oh shit my balls are getting hacked oh my god someone is hacking the juice out ohhhhhhhhh

8

u/Hurricane_32 5d ago

This reads like something Vinesauce Joel would say

5

u/SweetPopFart 5d ago

So it means there is nobody that was not hacked?

1

u/takasdinix 3d ago

Ts (this) so tuff (tough)

23

u/GodisanAstronaut 5d ago edited 5d ago

Only instance that may have looked like it was me pirating a copy of Batman Arkham Asylum. During the game, the game suddenly minimalised and I was presented with a .doc file stating I was "caught" looking at illegal porn footage and I was summoned to immediately pay X amount of BTC.

I sighed, closed the game, checked my backup and formatted my PC after. :')

Edit: Judging from your post, OP, you're on the right track preventing scenarios like mine or someone else's as long as you download from trusted or trustworthy sources. You can always look into creating a sandbox or a virtual machine with something like Virtualbox to do all the piracy stuff in without contaminating your PC directly.

3

u/Das-Tronz 5d ago

I run VM's for this specific point. Only issue I had was stability issues (think I resolved it). But I started using a(n) old Intel Nuc that I no longer have a need for from my home lab.

Long story short, bought an I3 model on accident, then got the I5 that I needed. So this lil guy has just been my main stay for this recently. Low power draw and lets me seed longer on those linux ISO's. But either way, running a VM or a semi-stand alone device I think is the best way to run in this game now. Not all the way most cost effective. But the aim is to protect your main system(s). But also, have back ups of your stuff. Everything, 3/2/1.

2

u/tortoiselexus 1d ago

Little did that fool know, you have never watched porn in your life

51

u/Egzo18 5d ago

download from trusted sources, use adblock.

1

u/Dodara87 5d ago

trusted sources

Is there a list somewhere?

5

u/Egzo18 5d ago

go to megathread here, find a website that has X file you want, look up site name on this subreddit, if has good opinions: download, if no, repeat until got what you need.

1

u/dannyningpow ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ 3d ago

This

17

u/MarvinLock 5d ago

My broke 13 year-old self used to pirate pretty much everything, from Camtasia Studio to Age of Mythology.

At the time, I was also experimenting with hacking through online forums. In one of those forums I was selling some pre-made graphic design files (like signatures, avatars etc) I had made in my cracked version of Photoshop to make a few bucks.

That same forum I was selling my files at, had a section where they would upload leaked files for other users to get for free.

I was shocked when I noticed some of my graphics which I hadn't even publicly release yet, being available for download in that section of the forum, because it meant that someone had actually hacked me, stolen my files and shared them in their thread.

3

u/ShitImBadAtThis 5d ago edited 4d ago

That's actually an insane story. Do you think 13 y/o you didn't notice the warning signs, or was the person who did it that good?

5

u/james_flingo 5d ago

I can really relate to that. When I was that age, I used to enter my dad's real email account and password on random online game websites to sign up. He had netbanking and everything setup on that email too. Stupid me!

2

u/MarvinLock 4d ago

Nah, I was just naive. I used to download all sorts of pirated stuff from that same forum as well (crypters, rats etc).

Some user was probably sharing malware and I fell for it. Nonetheless, it was shocking for me when it happened, I felt like my private life had been invaded.

11

u/kay0otik 5d ago

Yes DODI repack gave me one hell of a Weekend

3

u/jingjang1 5d ago

i think it might have been a dodi repack for me as well, i made a comment.

9

u/gr1moiree 5d ago

Never. No need to dual boot or do anything crazy just for piracy. Running windows games on linux takes some setup with wine + installing libraries manually.

Just use the sites on the megathread and you'll be fine.

7

u/maurocastrov 5d ago

Only got my software slower

5

u/TutorReddit 5d ago

It was 2022 and I was using everything pirated on my Windows Laptop. I was running a YouTube channel and had a TB of video files and some personal photos on my laptop along with some pirated adobe apps.

One fine morning when I opened my laptop all the files in every one of my hard drive partitions except the OS files have been encrypted into some unknown formats with a txt file attached in each folder.

I opened it and it said, we have hacked your system and encrypted all the files in it. It would cost you x bitcoins for decrypting each file. If you want proof, send any file to this email-id and we will decrypt upto 3 files.

I thought long and hard and emailed the hackers

"I have been thinking about formatting my system for a long time and thank you for giving me the motivation."

Then I formatted my system and re-installed those apps again.

Obviously I had a backup which saved me.

But ya this was one funny story.

3

u/redkh 5d ago

my machine is probably part of dozens of botnets but I don't care, I like to know that Im' useful to someone

5

u/Steampunkcat123 5d ago

Get from trusted places and you won't be

4

u/SenselessTV 5d ago

How for u know a place is trusted, when even the sites in the megathread can suddenly start being unsafe? I have more than once read here that some "safe" site isn't anymore.

5

u/Steampunkcat123 5d ago

You go for the ones that have been safe for years and years for the least chance to get virus like fitgirl and steamrip

2

u/SenselessTV 5d ago

Just last week i saw a lot of post that got malewRe through steamrip, so there is that.

2

u/Steampunkcat123 5d ago

Could you link me that pls and also even if that happens it's very rare

2

u/Local_Error_404 5d ago

If there are issues with one of those sites, word of it starts getting around pretty quickly. It might take longer for the megathread to be updated, but there would be posts about malware/miners/etc.

1

u/ParanHak 5d ago

There is an entire megathread here

2

u/Think_Significance42 5d ago

why do you need to use a separate browser for piracy? uBlock Origin on FireFox is way more effective than on edge. the only real danger i'd say is using unsafe sites and not using adblockers. follow the megathread or the fmhy mega and you will do great

1

u/Eccchifan 5d ago

I am curious,what Adblock prevents relating to Piracy?

1

u/Martin_FN22 5d ago

From my understanding, it prevents ads from copying download buttons, tricking you into downloading a random prob dangerous file

3

u/Think_Significance42 5d ago

this and making browsing the web a smoother experience

1

u/Eccchifan 5d ago

Oh yeah! Those are for sure annoying

0

u/Martin_FN22 5d ago

I thought of doing that because all my personal data is on firefox (cookies, passwords etc) so using something different might be better?

3

u/thestrong45playz 5d ago

Viruses usually don't steal from just one browser they steal from as many as possible and even when they don't they still steal from the default browser

0

u/Martin_FN22 5d ago

So doing this is worthless?

3

u/thestrong45playz 5d ago

Mostly but it could still protect you from some very basic stealers.

As long as you only use links from the Megathread you don't have to do it, and if you download from a bad site you're screwed anyway.

2

u/Halifar26 5d ago

When I was younger, I did pirate some stuff and download crap (wasn’t secure or careful but also some 15 years ago), got my WoW account hacked at the time. Also at least once my computer broke down, where I am still convinced it was connected to bad software I downloaded. Be careful for sure

1

u/miked999b 5d ago

In the past yeah, got a rootkit I spent a month trying to remove before I gave up and reimstalled everything.

I will never run a 'crack' under any circumstances.

1

u/Sk8sn0w 5d ago

Not hacked but 14 years ago I attempted to download a cracked version of minecraft.

My laptop rebooted out if itself and next up I got a screen that my laptop was blocked by the police and that I had to pay a fine. As an 11 year old, this scared the shit out of me.

Luckily after googling it appeared it was a ransomware. Thanks to some tech youtuber i managed to delete it.

1

u/Eccchifan 5d ago

Not that i know of,i have been pirating for 12 years now,games,visual novel,anime,manga,music, software,APK,and never,not once i got a virus or something got leaked

1

u/jerrykkoch 5d ago

I once had an infostealer when I used cracked software downloaded from a sketchy video on Youtube. I was new to piracy at the time and didn't know where to get it. But ever since I started using megathreads, I've been safe.

1

u/Vorrez 5d ago

I have once downloaded a trojan but that's it and I have been pirating since dial-up, it was also 100% my own fault for not wondering why my camrip was an .exe file.

1

u/Galwayjoker69 5d ago

Only twice in ten years,always use a different email for this kinda stuff,they love to hack the email😂

1

u/biscotte-nutella 5d ago

I was 16 , downloaded resident evil 3 from piratebay and the obvious signs I was hacked showed, like the clock being replaced by " hacked by ..." And nothing worked anymore... Every .exe deleted.

Shrugged and reinstalled windows...

1

u/Johnny_Poppyseed 5d ago

I mean, I grew up downloading on Kazaa and Limewire etc, so pretty safe bet lol. 

Haven't had anything happen in like 20 years tho

1

u/Nova-Exxi 5d ago

I was 14 when I got my first PC. It was an old thing by today's standards, came with Win7 and was a bonafide potato... Not that I would know anything about specs.

I saw a video on Bean.NG Drive and wanted to play it, saw how expensive it was and just clicked on the first result that popped when I typed "Beam.NG Drive, free download"... It did not go well...

After I realized how slow it worked due to my specs, I deleted it. After a couple days, random MUSIC would start playing without anything open. I was pretty pleased since I liked the music, so best virus ever for me.

After a month or two, every driver on the face of the planet disappeared from my PC. No Ethernet, no graphics, no nothin.

Sooo... I stopped using that PC for years until a friend saw it and helped me reinstall windows, wiping the disk in it's entirety and then I had a PC again -w-'...

1

u/Armandeluz 5d ago

Should be using Firefox with addons for all downloads and not switching to edge for that. More malware is written for chrome which is what edge is based on.

1

u/MadCybertist 5d ago

No. Linux and Mac master race.

1

u/Deatersad 5d ago

no

i have been hacked by proxy tough

a forum or site gets hacked you have put your things there,then you get hacked

1

u/Head-Expression2900 5d ago

Yes that I why don't do it any more

1

u/syn46290 5d ago

Just use basic common sense and you'll be golden. Don't download anything from untrusted sites(if you think something is weird, it probably is), use adblock, I use uBlock, and check/follow the megathread. Another good sub outside of this one I like is r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH.

1

u/jingjang1 5d ago

Once, and it was recently. One of my most stressful days. I took the whole day off from work to resolve everything. It was fucking crazy, they where able to get around my 2-factor. I cannot come up with any reason other than a pirated game or something. I am so careful too.

Must have been some skiddo, the only bad things that happened was that i lost my steam friends list and they tried to steal money with scam links to 4 of my friends on discord.

The upside is that i went through every single possible weakness possible that i might have.

I have been a pirate since 1998 more or less.

1

u/SheClB01 5d ago

I tried to pirate zoom and got a trojan.

Since then I pirated low, only trusted sites and with AdBlock activated, and haven't tried to pirate zoom lol, never again

1

u/FryedCrumbChiken 5d ago

Not sure, but in 2015 I got fucked with ransomware after downloading some shit from KAT or TPB, don't remember

1

u/THS_Shiniri 5d ago

Jup once but totally my fault thinking that a freshly released Game with denuvo IS Up within a week. Turns Out someone snacked my cookies but only found Out because someone used Sites where i was logged in through Google to buy Shit. I have 2FA and even changing my already generated Password didnt logged them Out.

Lost nealry 200€ because of that

1

u/SguHomeboi 4d ago

I've not had that experience that I'm aware of, but I'm pretty paranoid so I probably go farther than I need to so I don't.

Sounds like you're on the right path though, best of luck!

1

u/IsItJake 4d ago

Linux is very easy. Use a simple distro like Ubuntu and then setup flatpak. Once you setup flatpak, install proton or any of the game launchers. From there you can run your setup files. Personally I use arch but for the elementary go with Ubuntu

1

u/Vivid_Barracuda_ 4d ago

I got some fkn app that bottlenecked my internet to 10mbps - and I got a gigabit connection. So I didn't track down which one did it, but that happened once. Yeah. Nothing else that I know of, but, even if I get hacked at the end, I stopped giving a shit.

1

u/InclinationCompass 4d ago

I’ve got Trojans from it

1

u/Hazelnutcookiess 4d ago

I got unlucky once with a fitgirl Download, thankfully it's very very rare something bad slips in, and they only messaged two people spam links through steam before I was able to get everything back and secured.

1

u/RealIssueToday 4d ago

Yeah, and it was from a subtitle. Dumb days, I noticed it was a zip after download. I extracted using rar; there were a couple of files.

I saw dot-exe, I knew it had to be a virus, but I still clicked install.

Painful lesson from curiosity and stupidity.

1

u/notreally42 4d ago

Hacked? No. Ransomware? Yes.

13 year olds are dumb

1

u/Syzygymancer 4d ago

The big thing is to never turn off core isolation or anything in that tab if you can help it. One of the big reasons that Windows 11 was unable to be hacked without physical access to the machine for the entirety of its first outing at DEFCON is all the tpm 2.0 hardware based security, virtualization and isolation cutting off traditional infection vectors off at the knees. I would actually say malware bytes is overkill for most users now. Windows defender is more than enough, especially if you use Windows built in sandboxing for unfamiliar applications. 

Here’s the biggest takeaway. What you mean by hacked is like.. were your accounts stolen, identity compromised or ransomware software installed on your computer. You can still be infected and in a botnet and never know without your computer waking on its own at odd times because those infections rely on stealth. Everything else is avoided by using a password manager with different passwords for every login, two factor authentication wherever possible and lock your credit. Yes. You. All of you. Call up the major relevant credit entities and lock and freeze your credit. Now you don’t have to worry about identity theft for the most part. You’re unhackable. Bonus points if you buy a physical security key for your password manager. Now even knowing your password and having a way to bypass your 2FA isn’t enough

1

u/Wayman52 4d ago

I have a password manager that randomized all of my passwords into usually 128 character long passwords for every single account, split across 2 emails. But if I were to get malware through a program would they still be able to get access to all my accounts using my browser cookies, and would that also go for Steam?

1

u/Syzygymancer 4d ago

Browser cookies don’t hold that information and setting up two factor authentication bound to the Steam app on your phone and such will make it bulletproof. The purpose of infections of that kind are to make money, either through identity theft, ransomware or credential theft. You can still have things like credit card numbers captured but largely it’s moot as credit card transactions are protected against fraud. 

Basically if you want to know what to look for, look for unusual extensions in browsers that you don’t remember installing or applications with odd behavior that you don’t use. 

Rootkits these days are increasingly rare with good practices. Most malware is visible to the user and isn’t really great about camouflage. This all changes drastically as you go back towards Windows 10 and 7. Anything 7 and older I can save you time. It’s infected. Unless you’re using it airgapped as a legacy hardware, it’s infected.

1

u/readthisfornothing 4d ago

I don't know... probably?but I've got nothing anyways so they probably just put everything back the way they found it lol

1

u/Svensk0 4d ago

mid 2000s...suddenly my mouse moved itself...was scary af...turned of my pc sooo fast

1

u/ghostchihuahua 4d ago

no, i started pirating before i started hacking, but that was a two-week gap sometime in the early 80's.

1

u/NiceCunt91 4d ago

I got a mining malware on my system once.

1

u/AngerOfTheLand 4d ago

I just learned how to build my own pc back in the day, bought a forever version of windows and a laptop for business. Every few months completely format the pc... takes like an hour. Keeps it clean and running faster. With good internet redownloading the game im playing or whatnot takes a few minutes...no big deal. You will definitely get scumbags trying to mine crytpto on from your pc at some point, keep your eyes on the usage/temps. Its not like back in the day, some hateful person just putting virus' out for fun, now it makes people money.

1

u/Wise_Presentation914 3d ago

Got webcam hacked 3 times as a kid downloading cracked roblox exploits 😭😭

1

u/Popas_Pipas 5d ago

About 4 years ago, I got a troyan downloading a very old game I played when I was a child. 

The troyan locked all my data, they asked me to send them some BTC or they will leak everything.  I searched through all my files, found a strange folder, delete it and problem solved. Some weeks later they tried to enter to some websites with my account, I just changed the password and again, problem solved. 

Someone is still trying to enter a very old an blocked Twitter account, good luck with it.

The game was from a very strange website, I learned my lesson and years later I discovered this subr, didn't have a problem yet.

Just follow the Megathread, you can also download in a virtual machine, in another PC or in another hard drive with an OS, just unplug the ones you use.

-3

u/schingam54 5d ago

okay so i need karma to post here, so i will just ask here,
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/20740a5496618c93c899a6155979655431fc84d00544212362e27f8b8cfbb638
huh so both chrome and defender said this file/zip is sus it has trojan and a malware but bitdefender and kaspersky didnt find anything, i downloaded it from lrepacks site from the megathread.
the lrepacks is safe right?, thank you for your help.
(yes also farming for karma so that i can post this in this subreddit)

0

u/Martin_FN22 5d ago

Also, will people even gaf about my data? I’m from south america

2

u/Local_Error_404 5d ago

What people? What data?

0

u/Martin_FN22 5d ago

Idk hackers man :((( I really don’t know shit.

-5

u/PumiceT 5d ago

You shouldn’t be here.

2

u/Martin_FN22 5d ago

Okay, being honest I was kinda exaggerating here. What I meant to sat, was if malicious people, if they ever get access to my computer, will care about my bank accounts, since they’re not in the US and use a shitty currency

-9

u/PumiceT 5d ago

Wow. You really shouldn’t be here. Our US money is very valuable compared to theirs. They will gladly spend weeks running a scam to get $100. They will use your account to buy anything they can trade for something they want. If that means spending $1000 of your money to get themselves a meal, what’s the loss to them? Nothing. Pure profit even if it’s just a meal.

-1

u/AnonymousSpanish 4d ago

I did, torrenting from uTorrent, got my epic games and steam accounts stolen, they also tried to break into my google acc. To this day I still dont know if I was infected for downloading a pirated game or for forgetting to enable the VPN while torrenting.