How to validate a large torrented file is clean? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 15 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) by Yourname942@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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How do you validate that what you torrented is clean/no malware/spyware? Specifically, I torrented two things:

Astute Graphics Plug-ins Elite Bundle 3.9.1.7z from teamos. *It is 678MB so I can't upload to Virustotal
Master Collection 2025 from uztracker (which is listed on monkrus's website's list of trackers). It is 37.5GB so I can't upload to Virustotal.

I'm not sure what I should to do to be honest.

Edit: Would splitting the 37.5GB file into 650MB pieces and then scanning with virustotal help? Not sure if downloaded files need to be whole for it to work properly.

This is the results from virustotal (I could only scan 4 files in the master collection without running the iso)

Thank you.

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[-] Yourname942@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 hours ago

How would I know if there was hidden spyware/malware if I ran it in a VM? (if they are smart they try to be undetected)

[-] whats_a_lemmy@midwest.social 4 points 11 hours ago

You don't, but if someone figured out how to do a VM escape surely they would have bigger aspirations than some random torrent

[-] Yourname942@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

I mean yeah that makes sense, but I don't know enough about torrenting (nor tech in general) to know if something is safe/trustworthy sadly.. I feel like I'm probably better off spending several hundreds on a subscription, than more likely than not be hacked/get advanced spyware. I doubt they wouldn't prey on dumb people like me if it is easy. If I was more knowledgeable it would probably be possible to manually remove infected bits of a torrented file to make it work, but idk.

[-] pirateKaiser@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

If you find torrenting and running a VM too technical, I'm sorry to say you're better off not trying to identify and remove any malicious code.

Don't put yourself down and waste your money, you can get over the learning curve for this, it's not that steep.

To elaborate, as the previous reply stated, running the cracked programs inside a virtual machine allows you to isolate an environment specifically for this usage. Configured properly (another reply went into more detail here), even if the cracked software has something malicious, it can't harm you. So you can safely ignore wether there's a virus or not.

[-] Yourname942@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 hours ago

Thank you for the info, and for the encouragement. Yeah I am definitely going to try using a VM to diagnose the files more closely. To confirm, is a VM, (such as Hyper-V) similar to Windows Sandbox, where it effectively resets itself (new slate) each time you open it? Or can I install the torrented files in the VM and still access it if I close and reopen the VM in the future?

Also, which VM would you suggest? I apologize for appending so many questions to my original post.