this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
402 points (90.4% liked)

Technology

59472 readers
5118 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Gen Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do::The generation that grew up with the internet isn’t invulnerable to becoming the victim of online hackers and scammers.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] phillaholic@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This assumes a bad actor doesn’t flood the torrent with their own peers. It would be trivial to set up a couple hundred peers to distribute malware.

Not sure if it was ever confirmed, but some years back it was speculated that the MPAA or associated groups were putting out bad torrents full of broken files to stop people from pirating movies.

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

A "couple hundred peers" is a lot easier said than done. That being said, it does happen and you are correct that having a lot of seeders doesn't guarantee a safe download.

All of the three conditions I mentioned are neither sufficient nor necessary for a safe download, but there is a strong correlation. Unless the torrent is official (e.g. official Linux distro torrents), there is always some chance of a bad download. The chance can be low but is never zero.