Andre Yoskowitz
4 Aug 2007 18:30
TorrentSpy, the public torrent tracker in the midst of a lawsuit from the MPAA is apparently advertising, even promoting fake torrent clients that are bundled with malicious adware.
The clients, created by a Swedish company called Wakenet, look like legit torrent clients but instead just infect computers with adware that is hard to uninstall.
The clients, Get-Torrent, Torrent101, TorrentQ and BitRoll result in a barrage of annoying popups, yet TorrentSpy is actively promoting them. Underneath each download, the words "Use Get-Torrent for high speed downloads" appears, tricking users into downloading them.
The malware bundled with the clients is a program called "Cidhelp" that can be removed from Windows default add/remove in the Control Panel. However, most anti-virus programs will cripple the malware but not completely delete it, making it impossible to uninstall.
The Pirate Bay and Mininova both banned the clients from advertising using Adbrite but apparently money is more important to TorrentSpy then the safety of their user's computers.
Source:
TF