Cryptocurrency malware has been found in a torrent download of the new Marvel movie Spider-Man: No Way Home, a cybersecurity firm has warned. “This [crypto] miner adds exclusions to Windows Defender, creates persistence, and spawns a watchdog process to maintain its activity,” the firm explained.
Beware When Downloading Spider-Man: No Way Home Movie From a Torrent Website
Cybersecurity firm Reasonlabs warned Thursday that cryptocurrency malware has been found in a torrent download of the new Marvel hit movie “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
Reasonlabs, which provides enterprise-grade cyber protection for users worldwide, noted that “To lure in as many victims as possible, attackers must stay up to date with trending topics.” The cybersecurity firm elaborated:
In this case, we are facing someone who has placed a monero miner in a torrent download of what seems to be the new movie Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home has hit the $1 billion mark at the box office, making it the highest-grossing movie of 2021. The third installment of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man series, No Way Home is the first movie released during the Covid-19 pandemic to reach the $1 billion mark.
Reasonlabs explained: “The file identifies itself as ‘spiderman_net_putidomoi.torrent.exe,’ which translates from Russian to ‘spiderman_no_wayhome.torrent.exe.’” The firm believes that the file most likely originated from a Russian torrenting website.
According to the firm:
This miner adds exclusions to Windows Defender, creates persistence, and spawns a watchdog process to maintain its activity.
“The malware tries to stay away from examining eyes, by using ‘legitimate’ names for the files and processes that it creates; for example, it claims to be by Google and drops files with names like sihost64.exe, and injects to svchost.exe,” Reasonlabs described.
The cybersecurity firm advised that one easy precaution is to always check that the extension of the file being downloaded matches that of the file intended to download. For example, a movie file should end with “.mp4” and not “.exe.” The firm added that “To make sure you see the real file extension, open a folder, go to ‘View’ and check ‘File name extensions.’ This will make sure you see the full file type.” The full analysis of this malware can be found here.
What do you think about hackers putting a crypto miner in a torrent download of Spider-Man: No Way Home? Let us know in the comments section below.
Kevin Helms
A student of Austrian Economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open-source systems, network effects and the intersection between economics and cryptography.
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Sony, Marvel
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