17 percent of all infected pirated content were from Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones accounted for 17 percent of all infected pirated content that researchers at Kaspersky Lab tracked last year, with 20,934 users attacked. Game of Thrones came in as the most-targeted show. In many places, popular programs are also consumed via illegal channels, such as torrent-trackers and unauthorized streaming platforms. Unlike legitimate resources, torrent trackers and hosted files may prompt a user to download a file that looks like an episode of a TV show that can be malware infested.
Getting something for nothing has a certain appeal so while most people should know that downloading pirated content is high risk that can infect one's device, the reality is that tapping illegal markets for popular shows continues to thrive as a practice.
The popular HBO series started it's eighth and final season on April 14. Not all of those fans have an HBO subscription however, so activity via pirate sites is expected to remain popular. The danger isn't with new episodes, binge watching previous seasons before the premiere is common. The Game of Thrones Season 1 episode "Winter is Coming" is the most targeted episode of the show, according to Kaspersky Lab’s findings. The first and final episodes, attracting the most viewers, are likely to be at greatest risk of malicious spoofing. Online hackers tend to exploit people's loyalty and impatience, so they may promise brand new material for download that is really malware. Researchers at Kaspersky Labs thinks that it is highly likely there will be a spike in the amount of malware disguised as new episodes of this show.
Game of Thrones is not the only series attracting demand for pirated versions. The Walking Dead and Arrow were the next most popular pirated shows to be targeted by malware hackers. In all, 18,794 and 12,163 users were attacked, respectively. The researchers found that 126,340 users were attacked last year, which is was 30 percent less than in 2017. That decline is however smaller than in other segments. For comparison, users affected by malware delivered via other popular content, including porn, fell by 45 percent in 2018. The decline might be related to some of this year's events that affected the number of torrent file downloads. In 2018, Google down ranked more than 65,000 torrent websites making it so many users were unable to find them when looking for TV series downloads. Two major torrent trackers,Pirate Bay and Demonoid, suffered functionality collapses, and one of the oldest one, Leechers Paradise, was shut down for good.