{"id":124278,"date":"2021-06-25T21:23:24","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T04:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/oddball-malware-blocks-access-to-pirated-software"},"modified":"2021-06-25T21:23:24","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T04:23:24","slug":"oddball-malware-blocks-access-to-pirated-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/oddball-malware-blocks-access-to-pirated-software","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Oddball\u2019 Malware Blocks Access to Pirated Software"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/oddball-malware-blocks-access-to-pirated-software.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Rather than steal credentials or hold data for ransom, a recent campaign observed by Sophos prevents people from visiting sites that offer illegal downloads.<\/p>\n<p>The objective of most malware is some kind of gain \u2014 financial or otherwise \u2014 for the attackers who use it. However, researchers recently observed a unique malware with a single intent: Blocking the infected computers from visiting websites dedicated to software piracy.<\/p>\n<p>The malware (which SophosLabs principal researcher Andrew Brandt called \u201cone of the strangest cases I\u2019ve seen in a while\u201d) works by modifying the HOSTS file on the infected system, in a \u201ca crude but effective method to prevent a computer from being able to reach a web address,\u201d he wrote in <a href=\"https:\/\/news.sophos.com\/en-us\/2021\/06\/17\/vigilante-antipiracy-malware\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a report<\/a> published Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rather than steal credentials or hold data for ransom, a recent campaign observed by Sophos prevents people from visiting sites that offer illegal downloads. The objective of most malware is some kind of gain \u2014 financial or otherwise \u2014 for the attackers who use it. However, researchers recently observed a unique malware with a single [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}