Originally posted over on /r/piracy (https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/15itrip/1337x_admins_allowing_bg3_torrent_with_bitcoin/)
It looks like a bitcoin miner was included in the installer, and the admins on 1337x may or may not give a shit apparently. Scanned my pc and my wifes and found the same stuff the others mentioned.
According to the other comments, don’t feel the need to uninstall as the miner was installed separate to the game, just give a Malwarebytes scan to get rid of the junk.
It’s even worse apparently. Apparently someone looked at where the coins are going, and the coins are going to the 1337x admins, and the uploader is just getting a cut of those coins. Which explains why the admins are unlikely to really care because they’re profiting off their users.
I have severe trust issues with any kind of pirated software so I basically never download it as a result, and shit like this is why. Even private trackers and “trusted” groups aren’t enough for me to download most software.
Do you have any evidence of that?
can we get some proof? this is really interesting. I’d like to see how they’re tracking stuff
How did they figure that out?
Crytpo isn’t inherently anonymous. you can easily follow coins.
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Obligatory plug for Monero.
…Which is a huge fucking hassle to try and use, IMO.
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What about it was a hassle for you?
First, the fact that I have to download the whole blockchain to use it. I’m not on a super fast connection, so that took like a day. The difficulty and expense of getting Monero was also an issue; I had to buy Bitcoins, then move Bitcoins to an exchange that would let me buy Monero, because the exchange I could buy Bitcoin on didn’t work with Monero (due to the perception that it’s only used for criminal activity). At every step, there’s a transaction fee, and that fee isn’t entirely transparent up front, so it’s harder to estimate what the final price (in fiat currency) will be.
At the tiem I was trying to use it, there weren’t any user-friendly wallets, and I don’t think there was any capability to use it from a mobile phone; that makes it more difficult to use than other crypto.
I’m not sure how well it plays with Tails of Qubes; I never got far enough to give it a shot.
I’m not saying that any of these thigns are bad, but they do make it harder for a typical person to start using, and until more regular people are using privacy-focused crypto and operating systems, they’re always going to have the appearance of being used for crime only.
Ah thanks for explaining! Yeah the inability to purchase it directly on local exchanges is a bummer, although if localmonero vendors are available in your area, you may be able to pay them using your local bank account too.
These days you definitely don’t have to download the entire blockchain to use it; you can just connect to someone else’s node. But if you want to restore an old wallet, you unfortunately do have to run through each blockchain transaction after the wallet was created, to see if any of those transactions belong to you. There’s also a mobile app nowadays called Cake Wallet.
All in all, I agree that it’s not the friendliest crypto to use, unfortunately. Its main selling point is privacy, and criminals are more incentivized than others to protect their privacy, so I’m not sure how it’ll ever shake off that image.
You can follow the wallet address , but unles you know who the address belongs to, you can’t follow it. So we ask again, where the proof that the coins went to site admins?
For gog games you can check the digital signature on the installer to make sure it’s legit. It should be signed by GOG.
If you aren’t scanning every software you download, whether a pirate torrent or normal direct download, that’s kinda your own fault
Motherfuckers out here rawdogging the internet like it’s 1998.
It just feels better… I can’t feel the bits otherwise.
Even in '98, that was fucking stupid.
To be fair, I cannot remember a software where no anti virus program turned red. Those cracks always look suspicous to the heuristics.
Of course but it’s usually pretty easy to filter out the false positives that always appear as a Trojan (because of the file modification payload) vs a crypto miner
Do you have a guide or anything I can checkout? I usually google what flags show up and use big name uploaders but never know for sure.
They usually say something generic like HackTool.
Agreed, but if it’s a GOG release it doesn’t need a crack because it never had DRM in the first place.
Oh 100%. Was a dumb moment where I didn’t expect it and didn’t bother, and neither did a lot of other people from the looks of it. Good thing is it was something fixable in less than 5 mins and not a bigger problem.
I would completely reformat all affected machines. AVs are not perfect. Yes it sucks, but imagine the consequences of doing any form of banking on an infected machine.
Amazingly enough this all happened on 2 machines with 2-week-old OS installs so, honestly not a huge hassle to do so lmao.`
No downloading much anyways, but if I were to start, how would I go about scanning the files properly? Could you recommend something to read up on the topic?
For small files virustotal is great
Thanks, will check out! :-)
You shouldn’t trust anything uploaded there by IGGGames. They’ve been caught before adding miners to their files. I downloaded the rune release somewhere else seeing as they were the uploader on 1337x. I only really use 1337x for fitgirl repacks.
Why not from fitgirl page directly?
I mean I do grab the torrent link from the fitgirl site, but I find the torrent faster to download than the direct download links.
Just popping in to say that if you enjoy the game and if you are financially able to, buy the game properly to support the developers, especially Larian Studios.
If a dev studio should be financially incentivized to keep doing what they’re doing, it’s this one
LOL idiots BG3 is DRM Free just get the GOG installer, surely people mirror that shit, I’ve seent it before.
There’s a whole ass site for exactly that in the megathread.
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Yeah the thing is it installs programs that then give themselves access. You can block install.exe all you like, they’re way more advanced than that.
If you have a firewall like Tinywall, you can set it to block all apps from accessing the Internet unless they’re explicitly allowed to. Problem solved?
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I mean
He said it installed separately
So blocking the network for the game or the installer wouldn’t achieve anything lol
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I don’t run a whole ass DPS firewall for my home network lmao.
Firewall won’t do anything if the mining software was made decently well and just hides every connection through outgoing HTTPS.
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I’m talking about the firewall which is network handling only.
Most host firewalls only block incoming traffic.
All you have to do is get all mining data by making outgoing web connections to some random proxy, which can optionally have a domain to look more legit.
Firewall won’t care, and unless you’re pouring over the logs or looking at active connections, you won’t find it either.
Since it’s mining software, the fastest giveaway would be high usage or running an anti-virus to find sketchy executables.
I’m assuming OP is on windows which means the installer asked for admin perms to install to program files which is a really easy way to hide your mining executable assuming it hasn’t been fingerprinted by popular anti virus yet.
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Dont be mad at me but I bought the game from GOG :)
I mean, it’s an mtx-free, drm-free, full feature game. If BG3 isn’t worth paying for, I don’t know what is.
Yes. If such developers are not awarded then they will also switch to the dark side.
I reported it on 1337x earlier today, but they aren’t very responsive. Fitgirl has it listed as an upcoming repack, so hopefully not long to wait for a clean copy.
I opened this post all scared that I might’ve accidentally downloaded malware and my fuckin’ AV alerted
yeah yeah I know piracy and AVs don’t generally mix
I get a notification of malware from that address pretty often, could someone explain what it is?
My guess is that it’s an instance of some federated platform talking to lemmy, which has once been used to serve malware by one of its users. AFAIK lemmy only fetch avatars directly from instances, but it’s a privacy nightmare which, admittedly easy to say for one who doesn’t pay for storage space, should be mitigated with a caching mediaproxy.
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Has anyone seen anything on the DODI release or is it clean?
The DODI repack is based on the RUNE release which I believe is clean. Another commenter claims a found Trojan but there are others who found nothing, and imo it’s probably just the usual crack shenanigans.
Edit: See replies! It seems there are tainted versions of the repack out there, but there are clean ones too. Remember to keep a critical eye on your sites and uploaders in addition to your release groups. There’s a useful link in a reply to me below showing what you might see if you’ve downloaded a bad one.
There’s no need for a crack on this game, it’s available on GOG which is always DRM free.
it seems like half the people I see who downloaded it say they got a tojan, and half didn’t. Could it possibly be triggering only for certain people? perhaps if their specs are good enough for bitcoin mining or not? or maybe just at random? just spitballing here
For the RUNE release, it probably has more to do with what AV they’re using and how sensitive it is. Cracked games flag AVs all the time, you have to pay attention to what it’s alerting you about. If you’re being careful and clean about the sites, uploaders, and release groups you trust, that “trojan” is usually nothing more than an injected hook to defeat DRM.
it’s not a false positive people are finding. it’s a bitcoin miner called integritycheck.exe
Hey, thanks for that link! I’m really glad to have the details so I can verify for myself.
However, with that, I can REALLY confirm this is not an issue inherent to the DODI repack. DODI’s is what I’m using and I have none of that on my system – I checked with that powershell command, then also followed along with the comments to check other files and scheduled tasks that were mentioned.
That said, I got my download from torrentleech. I suspect a tainted version of the repack got onto certain other sites. It wouldn’t be the first time (which is why I specify trusted sites and uploaders in addition to release groups).
good to hear. dodi just officially denied the accusations as well:
although he claims integritycheck.exe is a windows process, when clearly it is also the name of that miner I linked above
my guess is the dodi account on torrent galaxy, although verified, could be a fake and is putting in these viruses, or maybe the people commenting saying they got the virus from dodi actually got it from that hogwarts legacy crack which originally had this miner.
either way, I always hope the community will take these sorts of claims seriously and investigate to ensure everyone’s safety
There are claims from comments on torrent galaxy that dodis release has the same bitcoin miner:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/15ivtzk/dodi_verified_release_on_tg_has_crypto_miner/
I hope someone can get to the bottom of this
Dodi also has the gog version below, it doesn’t even require an installation
I hope DODI is fine. I’m currently in the middle of installing it…
I looked for this integrity check file and ran the power shell script and I don’t see it listed anywhere on my system’s roaming folder nor in the list of applications with cpu usage.
isnt malwarebytes kinda crap these days?
Nah they do a good job. They are having intrusive popups asking you to subscribe to their paid tier for scheduled searches and real time protection, but if you know what you want/need, the free version is alright.
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What joke? I didnt make one.
linux.exe
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It doesn’t matter, inux does not rely on extensions, so you can name a Linux executable .exe .bin or anything. When I was learning ocaml that’s what our teacher was naming his executables.
but plz don’t do it it’s cursed and I hate it, thank you
linux.nuke
Why would you run linux.exe from Linux?
I downloaded the RUNE release from TorrentLeech and Windows Defender found a trojan so yeah I’ll believe it. I guess I’ll wait for a FitGirls repack.
I’ve had false positives from cracks on TL before, several times. I respect your carefulness with a known problem with another release, though.
Torrent galaxy rune release. However not seeing any issues? Malwarebytes scans coming up clean. No integritycheck folder in app data. No hidden process running when game running. 🤷♂️?
From TL? Really? That’s a surprise I didn’t wanna hear! :/
Sadly even with private sites a lot of things are taken from a public source and you occasionally run into this problem. Like some people up their ratios on these sites by using their VPN to get the public torrent and then seeding it back to the private one.
As long as the first uploader didn’t do it, then that won’t cause other downloaders any issues. Torrents always verify the hash is correct and will discard bad data. And TorrentLeech has uploading torrents limited.
More than likely a false positive- they often show up as Trojans due to the payload. I saw a similar issue from the rune release off of my private tracker.
Now that’s not something I’d have expected. I’ve never encountered anything like that in the nearly 15-20 years I’ve been using TL.
20? Interesting.
Just took a look at my profile, registered on 27 June 2006. So it’s in my 15-20 year window that I mentioned
On the private tracker I’m at I have already seen a clean mirror uploaded
