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There are millions of pirate so you can assume this doesn't happen to most people. If the expected return on piracy was negative people would not pirate. With

There are millions of pirate so you can assume this doesn't happen to most people. If the expected return on piracy was negative people would not pirate. With trusted uploaders you can also reduce the risk further because if they release malware their reputation will be ruined. That's not even taking into account the fact that people already run non-pirate executable code without auditing it from basically anywhere so the risk is about even I'd think.

wing-_-nuts 6y ago
The phrase 'if you're not the customer, you're the product' comes to mind. I could easily see malware being installed that flies under the radar, and the type of person that runs random executable code willy nilly is not the sort of person that would be able to trace malware back to one vector.
- deadmetheny 6y ago
  >The phrase 'if you're not the customer, you're the product' comes to mind That doesn't really apply to the warez scene. People aren't releasing cracked software for profit, they're doing it for the challenge and to say they were the first to do it. It's pure ego.
  - meepmorp 6y ago
    I'm not sure that precludes that cracked software being redistributed with added malware.
  - snet0 6y ago
    I think that's almost certainly the case for the people actually cracking the software, but because a lot of the time there isn't like a "Steam Store for Cracked Videogames" or similar for software, it can require significant effort to find the canonical source. If you know of some common Adobe patcher tool, or Windows activator, and just do a Google search for its name, what fraction of those download links will have a matching hash to the original release? You are right that, in the non-repackaged-with-additional-malware case, it seems a lot of the guys doing the cracking are just puzzle-solvers. Weeks to crack some Ubisoft DRM but probably never even touched the game.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
  I think pretty much all developers run random code willy nilly. People don't check the stuff they install through their package managers nor the dependencies of those packages, except the most anal ones.
a1369209993 6y ago
> If the expected return on [X] was negative people would not [X]. Not that your conclusion happens to be wrong, but you do know people buy lottery tickets, right?

wing-_-nuts 6y ago

The phrase 'if you're not the customer, you're the product' comes to mind. I could easily see malware being installed that flies under the radar, and the type of person that runs random executable code willy nilly is not the sort of person that would be able to trace malware back to one vector.

deadmetheny 6y ago
>The phrase 'if you're not the customer, you're the product' comes to mind That doesn't really apply to the warez scene. People aren't releasing cracked software for profit, they're doing it for the challenge and to say they were the first to do it. It's pure ego.
- meepmorp 6y ago
  I'm not sure that precludes that cracked software being redistributed with added malware.
- snet0 6y ago
  I think that's almost certainly the case for the people actually cracking the software, but because a lot of the time there isn't like a "Steam Store for Cracked Videogames" or similar for software, it can require significant effort to find the canonical source. If you know of some common Adobe patcher tool, or Windows activator, and just do a Google search for its name, what fraction of those download links will have a matching hash to the original release? You are right that, in the non-repackaged-with-additional-malware case, it seems a lot of the guys doing the cracking are just puzzle-solvers. Weeks to crack some Ubisoft DRM but probably never even touched the game.
ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
I think pretty much all developers run random code willy nilly. People don't check the stuff they install through their package managers nor the dependencies of those packages, except the most anal ones.

a1369209993 6y ago

> If the expected return on [X] was negative people would not [X]. Not that your conclusion happens to be wrong, but you do know people buy lottery tickets, right?