Is it safe to download torrents without protection?

[mech-eng]

I am not familiar with torrents and do not usually use them. But now, I have to. I try to download a file from kickasstorrents. When I click on "download torrent" a window appears, prompting me to choose an application. Would somebody please explain how I will proceed at this stage?

Thank you.

 

[Borg]

My recommendation is to think twice about using torrents and then think again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Security_problems

 

[mech-eng]

My recommendation is to think twice about using torrents and then think again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Security_problems

Do you mean not to involve in torrents? I have an antivirus and firewall.

Thank you.

 

[Borg]

Do you mean not to involve in torrents? I have an antivirus and firewall.

Thank you.

Yes, I wouldn't get involved with them. They are a well-known haven for malware. I have antivirus and firewalls also but I wouldn't go near one of those sites. It's like playing Russian Roulette with 3 rounds chambered.

 

[mech-eng]

Yes, I wouldn't get involved with them. They are a well-known haven for malware. I have antivirus and firewalls also but I wouldn't go near one of those sites. It's like playing Russian Roulette with 3 rounds chambered.

What do you think about using cracked programs from respect of security?

Thank you.

 

[jedishrfu]

What do you think about using cracked programs from respect of security?

Thank you.

A cracked program is an executable program and hence malware could have been inserted and will run when you execute the program.

 

[NTL2009]

I have also avoided the torrents, but I did use it to download some Ubuntu or Xubuntu distributions, using the link from their site. I assume that is safe, but now I'm wondering. The torrent app was far superior to downloading through a browser. I have a medium speed connection (some would say low speed), ~ 6 Mbps tops. The app was very flexible, allowing me to pause, and set (and schedule I think) BW limits (that let me download in the background during the daytime, while not affecting our VOIP phone, or other internet use). Normally, a download like that really messes with other devices in use.

So would you think that the torrents are OK for reliable sites?

 

[berkeman]

cracked programs

What's a cracked program?

 

[jedishrfu]

What's a cracked program?

A program that had some sort of licensing protection but that was subsequently cracked ie patched to remove or bypass the licensing protection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_cracking

 

[berkeman]

A program that had some sort of licensing protection but that was subsequently cracked ie patched to remove or bypass the licensing protection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_cracking

Thanks. So that's a bad thing, right? Well, I guess it depends on one's perspective...

 

[Naso]

There is nothing excessively dangerous to the torrent format, the danger comes mostly from what you're downloading; some professional companies actually distribute legitimate content via the Bittorrent protocol, but again so do many malware distributors — it's up to you to try and figure out what's safe and what's not, but that's another topic. To respond to your question, you are asked to select an application because the Bittorrent protocol requires a specific client: you must download and install it separately, once. I recommend either Vuze, Transmission or uTorrent (the latter is the most popular but has become quite add-ridden so I moved away from it)

 

[jedishrfu]

Thanks. So that's a bad thing, right? Well, I guess it depends on one's perspective...

Its bad from a legal perspective since you are leaving yourself open to theft of software lawsuits and from a more serious operational perspective since someone could have inserted malicious code into the program.

 

[jedishrfu]

True torrents technology wise are okay for downloading. You just need a checksum hash code like MD5 signature to verify the download.

Here's an example from Apache OpenOffice webpages

https://www.openoffice.org/download/checksums.html

 

[NTL2009]

True torrents technology wise are okay for downloading. You just need a checksum hash code like MD5 signature to verify the download.

Here's an example from Apache OpenOffice webpages

https://www.openoffice.org/download/checksums.html

Thanks - good point about the MD5 hash code, with the Linux distributions I downloaded, I always checked the MD5. No point in trying to install a broken system, and it does provide assurances safety-wise.

 

[QuantumQuest]

I am not familiar with torrents and do not usually use them. But now, I have to. I try to download a file from kickasstorrents. When I click on "download torrent" a window appears, prompting me to choose an application. Would somebody please explain how I will proceed at this stage?

While BitTorrent protocol and network is not illegal, the content shared is more often than not subject to copyright violation. That is the main reason that using torrents became so popular. Now, using a torrent client can put you in several potential risks: legal settlements, infection by some malware and problems with your ISP. The protocol itself is built in such a way, that every torrent client connecting to a torrent network, exposes the IP of your machine to all other devices connected and there's no way to bypass this. There is software running by copyright holders, so your IP can potentially be monitored regarding the first of the above mentioned potential risks. For the second, you can never be sure what may have been injected into the software you download: from some virus that can potentially be monitored by your antivirus software - this is many times under question, because malware creators create signatures not immediately identified by antivirus programs and when they do after some hours or days, your machine will already be infected, to some benign looking Trojan horse that will open a port sometime and download the real malware.
For the third risk, you may get some penalty from your ISP because they really - and for good reason, don't like to have battles with copyright holders but also because they don't want the bandwidth they provide get overspent.

Now, there is legal software that is distributed (or more precisely crowd sourced) by legitimate locations and this poses no problem in general but even then a good and up-to-date antimalware program is an absolute need.