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Cracking and Warez Sites: A Source of Malware, Viruses, and Legal Issues



Warez is a common computing and broader cultural term referring to pirated software (i.e. illegally copied, often after deactivation of anti-piracy measures) that is distributed via the Internet. Warez is used most commonly as a noun, a plural form of ware (short for computer software), and is intended to be pronounced like the word wares /ˈwɛərz/.[1] The circumvention of copy protection (cracking) is an essential step in generating warez, and based on this common mechanism, the software-focused definition has been extended to include other copyright-protected materials, including movies and games. The global array of warez groups has been referred to as "The Scene", deriving from its earlier description as "the warez scene". Distribution and trade of copyrighted works without payment of fees or royalties generally violates national and international copyright laws and agreements. The term warez covers supported as well as unsupported (abandonware) items, and legal prohibitions governing creation and distribution of warez cover both profit-driven and "enthusiast" generators and distributors of such items.


Direct download [DDL] sites are web locations that index links to locations where files can be directly downloaded to the user's computer; many such sites link to free file hosting services, for the hosting of materials.[13] DDL sites do not directly host the material and can avoid the fees that normally accompany large file hosting.




Cracking and Warez sites are Host of Trouble!!




However, laws and their application to warez activities may vary greatly from country to country;[citation needed] for instance, while Wawa-Mania is under sanction in France, it remains in operation via a host in Moldova, and through use of an Ecuadorian top-level domain.[25] Hence, while high-profile web hosts and domain providers[who?] generally do not permit the hosting of warez, and delete sites found to be hosting them,[citation needed] private endeavours and small commercial entities continue to allow the trade in warez to continue.[citation needed] And, in some countries, and at some times, software "piracy" has been encouraged, and international and usual national legal protections ignored.[citation needed] A dispute between Iran and United States over membership in WTO and subsequent U.S. block of Iran's attempts at full-membership has led Iran to encourage the copying of U.S. software; hence, there has been a subsequent surge in Iranian "warez" and "crackz" websites (as Iranian laws do not forbid hosting them inside Iran).[citation needed] The same policy has been adopted by Antigua,[citation needed] and others.[citation needed]


Warez are often distributed outside of The Scene (a collection of warez groups) by torrents (files including tracker info, piece size, uncompressed file size, comments, and vary in size from 1 k, to 400 k.) uploaded to a popular P2P website by an associate or friend of the cracker or cracking crew. An nfo or FILE ID.DIZ is often made to promote who created the release. It is then leeched (downloaded) by users of the tracker and spread to other sharing sites using P2P, or other sources such as newsgroups. From there, it can be downloaded by millions of users all over the world. Often, one release is duplicated, renamed, then re-uploaded to different sites so that eventually, it can become impossible to trace the original file. Another increasingly popular method of distributing Warez is via one-click hosting websites.[27] In the early 1990s, warez were often published on bulletin boards that had a warez section.


Today most warez files are distributed to the public via bittorrent and One-click hosting sites. Some of the most popular software companies that are being targeted are Adobe, Microsoft, Nero, Apple, DreamWorks, and Autodesk, to name a few. To reduce the spread of illegal copying, some companies have hired people to release "fake" torrents (known as Torrent poisoning), which look real and are meant to be downloaded, but while downloading the individual does not realize that the company that owns the software has received his/her IP address. They will then contact his/her ISP, and further legal action may be taken by the company/ISP.[clarification needed]


In the past, files were distributed by point-to-point technology: with a central uploader distributing files to downloaders. With these systems, a large number of downloaders for a popular file uses an increasingly larger amount of bandwidth. If there are too many downloads, the server can become unavailable. The opposite is true for peer-to-peer networking; the more downloaders the faster the file distribution is. With swarming technology as implemented in file sharing systems like eDonkey2000 or BitTorrent, downloaders help the uploader by picking up some of its uploading responsibilities. There are many sites with links to One-click hosting websites and other sites where one can upload files that contribute to the growing amount of warez.


Hackers would also use known software bugs to illicitly gain full administrative remote control over a computer, and install a hidden FTP service to host their wares.[citation needed] This FTP service was usually running on an unusual port number, or with a non-anonymous login name like "login: warez / Password: warez" to help prevent discovery by legitimate users; information about this compromised system would then be distributed to a select group of people who were part of the warez scene.[citation needed]


In order to advertise the existence of the compromised site, the IRC software would join public IRC warez channels as a bot and post into the channel with occasional status messages every few minutes, providing information about how many people are logged into the warez host, how many files are currently being downloaded, what the upload/download ratio is (to force users into contributing data of their own before they can download), which warez distributor is running the bot, and other status information.[30]


There is a common perception that warez sites represent high risk in terms of malware.[37] In addition, there are several papers showing there is indeed correlation between warez/file sharing sites and malware. In particular, one study[38] shows that out of all domains the study classified as pirate, 7.1% are infected (while out of random domains only 0.4% were infected); another study[39] maintains that '"maliciousness" of the content for sites they classified as pirate (which specifically included warez sites) is the highest among all the researched site categories. Domains related to anti-copy protection tools are among the most malicious sites.[40][41] Another study specifically targeted anti-copy protection tools such as cracks and key generators. They conclude that the majority of these programs aim to infect the user's computer with one or more types of malware. The chance of the end-user being exposed to malicious code when dealing with cracked applications or games is more than 50%.[40]


Threads discussing EMPRESS have descended into chaos, with supporters jostling with detractors over the perceived size of the EMPRESS ego and whether or not some of her philosophical musings (1,2,3) are best aired on forums dedicated to cracking or somewhere else far, far away. Either way, these issues have now become irretrievably entwined with her persona resulting in both hostility and an extremely toxic environment.


Warez may be pirated versions of commercial software distributed to the public through the Internet or a bulletin board system (BBS). Usually, warez distributors obtain pre-released or existing copies of copyrighted software, discover an effective way to deactivate or crack the registration system or copyright protection employed by the original software vendors and then offer these cracked versions through the Internet for downloading. The majority of warez files find public distribution within one-click hosting sites and BitTorrent sites.


The most common downloads at warez sites include software or applications from well known manufacturers like Symantec, Microsoft and Adobe. Large organizations combat warez materials by releasing fake torrents, which reveal the IP addresses of those distributing warez. These organizations may contact those responsible for illegally distributing their goods and inform them about impending legal consequences.


Although the raids mainly targeted those suspected of cracking content, the effects will trickle down to hit the software pirates on the street, the warez programmer said. Such pirates depend on the warez community for their supply of copy-protection-free content.


Protecting the intellectual properties for copyright owners, the United States, Australian, Japan, and several other countries are cracking down on pirate websites severely, leaving a sheer number of torrent sites blocked and defunct. You may have seen enough news as like,


People who have heard about TPB should have heard about KAT (KickAssTorrents). This popular and aged BitTorrent featured with a rich collection of torrents for movies, television shows, music, ebooks, and many other contents. Many people think this site has been offline as it is abducted by the US government in 2016 and in July of the next year, its creator Artem Vaulin was arrayed in Poland for hosting unauthorized material. However, the fact is there are lots of mirror and proxy sites that work flawlessly and will meet your torrenting need.


Myanonamouse, created in 2008. It hosts a huge variety of torrents for downloading all recent released (audio) ebooks and comics, and is the best torrent sites for comic for many US users. It doesn't come with a well-organized torrent library, so be ready to take some time to locate the target torrents. However, we shouldn't blame this as it provides more torrents than similar torrent sites. 2ff7e9595c


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