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.
Be careful when downloading Spider-Man: No Way Home Movie from a torrent website
Cyber security firm Reasonlabs on Thursday warned that cryptocurrency malware was found in a torrent download of Marvel’s new blockbuster 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’re up against someone who has placed a monero miner in a torrent download of what appears to be the new Spider-Man: No Way Home movie.
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’.
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 not to examine the eyes by using ‘legitimate’ names for the files and processes it creates; for example, it pretends to be from Google and removes files with names like sihost64.exe and injects into svchost.exe, ”described Reasonlabs.
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.
