What’s the worst a software developer has to be capable of doing to you if you pirate their application? One bit of add-on software program for Microsoft Flight Simulator—a downloadable version of the Airbus A320X produced and offered using FlightSimLabs for $a hundred—became discovered to be bundled with malware capable of rifling through person’ net browsers to reap usernames and passwords in retaliation for piracy.
The malware turned into analyzed by way of Andrew Mabbitt of Fidus Information Security, alerted through several Reddit threads, and tipped off Motherboard to the situation. Essentially, the add-on might include an executable titled “textual content.Exe,” which can pore via a user’s Chrome browser records, acquire passwords and usernames, after which send them off over an unsecured HTTP connection.
FlightSimLab proprietor Lefteris Kalamaras, in reality, confirmed that this became the case in a form submit, but asserted that this functionality become handiest grew to become towards users running a software program that the employer has deemed to be pirated.
1) First of all – there are no tools to expose any sensitive statistics of any customer who has legitimately bought our products. We all realize which you placed lots of acceptance as accurate within our products, which will be contrary to what we believe.
2) There is a selected technique used towards precise serial numbers that have been diagnosed as pirate copies and were making the rounds on ThePirateBay, RuTracker, and different such malicious sites.
3) If such a selected serial range is utilized by a pirate (someone who has illegally obtained our software) and the installer verifies this towards the pirate serial numbers saved in our server database, it takes extraordinary measures to alert us. “Test.Exe” is part of the DRM and is best centered in opposition to specific pirate copies of copyrighted software obtained illegally. That software is most effective extracted temporarily and is never underneath any instances used invalid copies of the product. The only purpose why this document might be detected after the installation completes is handiest if it turned into used with a pirate serial variety (now not blocklisted numbers).
The malware, which has now been eliminated from the upload-on installer in response to the backlash, turned into allegedly designed to goal a single, unique pirate, as Motherboard notes.
In the grand scheme of virtual rights management—which has blanketed the entirety from the unkillable scorpion enemy designed to make pirated variations of Serious Sam three unplayable to a “computer virus” that freezes your game at the very last boss of pirated versions of Earthbound and deletes your saved games—this approach is mainly invasive and perhaps now not even particularly felony. It might be a deterrent for any potential pirates who discover approximately it, but perhaps prospective customers as well.
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