What’s best practice to safely play pirated games on Linux? Looking to mitigate potentially malicious executables from wrecking havoc on my system.

  • lemmyingly@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Unless you inspect every line of code and/or monitor your computer activity to a super human level then you’ll never know.

    Viruses don’t behave like a neanderthal like they used to 20 years ago, so just because you don’t notice a virus doesn’t mean you don’t have one. Let’s be honest, viruses are still a thing and botnets have become a thing. These don’t magically appear from nothing.

    You shouldn’t be blindly trusting anyone on the internet, especially those not abiding by the laws. People and entities can be impersonated. They can behave differently at any moment.

    Personally i would do one of three things, run pirated content, in a VM, on a separate drive, or on a dedicated computer - because why take the risk when you don’t have to.

      • lemmyingly@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        I think corporations are doing quite well if your example is from 19 years ago.

        In the same era, we had things like LimeWire where files were frequently viruses, CP, or similar masquerading as innocent files like the latest song from your favorite artist.

        I’ve never tried closed trackers, so I can’t speak on that side of pirate life but I think it’s naive to trust pirates on public trackers.

    • ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      It’s kinda trivial to limit their ability to do anything in Linux though. It’s not as if virus authors are gonna waste their time trying to exploit a demographic that is both small and extremely fragmentary when they can just write for windows.

      • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Never mind the fact that almost all are Windows games. If there is any malware in there it’s directed at Windows.In all honesty, I find this to be a very silly concern.