Can Pirate's Bay be considered "safe" if it is used only for non-executable multimedia content?
Basically I want to download a serie in a specific language and absolutely nowhere I can find it and recently I saw that the serie is available in the language I want in The Pirate's Bay but I know the bad reputation of the site and I have never used it.
I ask if it can be considered "safe" in quotes because at least in this specific case the files are not executable, they are only .mkv and in fact I don't even plan to play them on my PC, I plan to play them on a computer I use as a media center that has no internet access (and it's Linux). And although this setup should be considered "safe" enough, the question itself makes me curious.
In the torrent there is only the chapters of the serie and nothing else, or so it seems, I would analyze the files in VirusTotal before playing them but each chapter weighs more than 1GB (they are in 1080p and last more than 40 minutes) and VirusTotal does not allow to upload files of a certain weight.
I am sorry for the generic question about a site with a bad reputation, but although according to my knowledge everything should be fine, there are always things that one does not consider or go unnoticed due to ignorance or lack of knowledge.
Not necessarily. For example, I know RAR is a bit out of style, but WinRAR just this week had some articles about malware lurking in otherwise non-executable files
There is no such thing as 'safe' user-generated content, only a spectrum of more or less safe content.
Who the actual fuck still uses winrar?
Enough people that the dude is still actively supporting and updating it for new OS versions. The RAR is unkillable.
I only recently stopped using it. And a lot of content on the internet, expecially ones for download use rar part files to split it up and host freely.
You can just use 7zip tho
Any media can contain exploits, for the most part if you stick to reputable uploaders you should do alright but it's essentially an unavoidable problem. Keep your media player up to date
It has to be executed to have any danger, so you'd need a zero day exploit for your media player, even then it should be contained at user level rather than system. I've not really heard of it happening, but it's theoretically possible I guess, would take a really bad coding mistake. Keep your players updated and you should be fine.
If it's for multimedia content, it's safe, I guess. I have been downloading movies and series from that page for 5 years, and I have never had any security problems.
Good to know! I know it's stupid and not at all the case, but I had read about a virus that ran on an old version of Windows when you open a file because Windows needed to compile the file to open it and the exploit took advantage of a vulnerability in that compiler to rescale to admin permissions, and I think about that when downloaded this serie.
You can hide malware in EXIF metadata.
Just let common sense and be always aware of abnormal device behavior.
There has also been a number of malwares targeted at codec decoders, VLC was at one time a big target, not sure that is true now a days though
There's no such thing as safe safe. While unlikely, even media/data files could contain exploits. They'd need to target specific issues in specific software, but that happens all the time.
WinRAR had a recent high publicity mistake earlier, where a "specially crafted" archive can make executables seem like other files so it's easy to accidentally run them. Big no.
I also recently saw an (old) exploit analysis: some Linux thing got wrecked specifically because of vulnerabilities in a media player/codec - in fact opening the folder was enough to trigger the exploit, which could give someone unrestricted access to your system. Very, very big no.
Back in the day, I think Windows Media Player had some idiotic license download thing that was also used as an attack vector.
Basically: executables are just a slam dunk malware delivery vector. Media files are safer in general but not safe.
Since it's a Linux box, you could try to sandbox your player with Firejail or a Flatpak + Flatseal. Just for a little bit of extra peace of mind.
I think you mean "The Pirate Bay"?
If you are a bit paranoid download it into a safe box and re-encode the file.
You can check justwatch.com to see if it's available anywhere for streaming or purchase. I dunno how they do it but they're amazing at tracking this sort of thing.