‘Angler’ Worm Hiding Out In Pirate Bay Site

Ads on the filesharing site were recently found laced with malicious software. This means visitors to the Pirate Bay who interact with one of these ads can become infected with the Angler exploit kit.

“Pirate Bay is a constant target for this type of attack because it meets the demands of the cybercriminals, who want to get access to a large number of visitors and the website to use advertising networks that are easier to compromise,” Softpedia reports.

Angler scans a victim’s web browser for older, vulnerable versions of Adobe Reader, Flash (which is the target in this case) and Java. The holes in these software programs are then exploited to compromise the computer.

One of the sources of malicious ads on Pirate Pay is exoclick.com, which is estimated to deliver more than 125 billion ad impressions a month.

“At the end of the day, we are not too surprised about this malvertising attack. A site that (over)uses advertisements (and especially salacious ones) is navigating dangerous waters,” Malwarebytes researcher Jérôme Segura said on the security firm’s blog.