Response from the admins
From where I’m sitting it looks like classic overconfidence. I would say keep your eyes open in the future but don’t pick up the pitchforks just yet.
Thanks. This community needed your logical input. I’ve been following this over the past few days and it seems like a blatent Reddit-type pitchfork situation. Based on the mods response and the absolute lack of proof surrounding the mods profiting from the crypto miner (honestly who the actual fuck even came up with this?), I think we need to all take a beat.
Also I don’t follow cracked games but this Emperess person seems like a fucking psychopath and the fact that literally anyone here believes a word she says is absolutely astonishing.
I am asking this community to PLEASE STOP REPOSTING THIS. Don’t let this community follow the ways of Reddit, please. We are better than that.
I agree, this entire thing looks very blown out of proportion to me. It’s not the first time and not the last time there will be malware in a brand new game torrent on 1337x.
This exact situation has happened before with a new game torrent that had malware, torrent eventually got taken down, and nobody raised a huge fuss other than not to download that torrent.
I feel like this community and the reddit one are made up of 14 year olds who figured out how to torrent 2 weeks ago and are freaking out over the prospect that downloading exe files isn’t safe…who would have thought!
So why did he defend the torrent in the comments and said it was not dirty and the uploader is not banned? This defence is laughable.
You can feel their frustration in this post. Being a mod is a thankless job.
You should pin it
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You know it’s bad when the almost constantly unhinged ‘Empress’ is the one speaking sense.
You looked at that screenshot and said, “Ah yes, here’s someone speaking sense” ?
It’s a sliding scale.
Haha, yeah okay perhaps sense isn’t the correct word.
Image Transcription:
Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point
February 5, 2018
This is also a TVTropes article, of course.
Something something broken clock
Yeah, except EMPRESS was just complaining that her own torrents got deleted, not that others were unsafe
I’ll translate: “I find actions of the 1337x admins disappointing. Deleting my torrents causes confusion for the user base, and these actions reflect poorly on your character, suggesting pusillanimity and insufficient discretion when selecting a sexual partner.”
There should be an Empress translator bot
That would be possible now with GPT technology. Just not OpenAI, because I assume everything Empress says is against their terms of service.
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what happened to rarbg
They closed due to upkeep costs.
EDIT: Here’s the full message:
Hello guys, We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our site. The past 2 years have been very difficult for us - some of the people in our team died due to covid complications, others still suffer the side effects of it - not being able to work at all. Some are also fighting the war in Europe - ON BOTH SIDES. Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us pretty hard. Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare. Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket. After an unanimous vote we’ve decided that we can no longer do it. We are sorry :( Bye
You know, it hurt at first but i think im happier that they went down while at the top of the game. Especially when you look at whats become of TPB and now 1337x apparently
TPB is not a valuable tracker anymore, but it’s a huge political statement, nobody is bringing them down and i respect that.
It’s the better choice. If you hand it off to someone else, there’s a risk they’ll change the tone/content/character of the site and make it worse.
It’s one of the major reasons baconBits shut down, they didn’t trust handing it off to anyone else. They didn’t want to see it become a shell of its former self (which it sort of already had, because of an accident that deleted hundreds of torrents a few years before the shutdown), and they gave a good long timeline for winding down, giving people ample warning.
aww thats too bad…
I haven’t had the courage to run executable code from P2P networks since the early 2000s. Even then it was probably a bad idea.
So you only pirate music and movies? How do you play games and use expensive software, then?
I buy them
I pirate movies and shows because the ecosystem for buying them is fucking trash. If I could just buy legal remuxes without DRM, I would.
Same. The day games start introducing arbitrary resolution limits based on my OS or browser choice, the way streaming sites do, is the day I’ll start pirating games.
Piracy, for me, is a matter of functionality, not price.
I am with you. It’s all a matter of convenience to me.
Steam, does a pretty good job of what it does. As does GOG.
Now- EA/UBI can suck a big fat one… but, steam/gog are good so far.
Regarding media, I am with you 100%. It’s strictly a matter of convenience. Back in the 20-teens, I didn’t even have a plex server running, as netflix was able to handle the majority of my media needs.
When, every fucking network created their own streaming service, and partitioned all of the media behind their own subscriptions, I said fuck that. The collection of linux ISOs keeps growing now.
When it is easier for me to use plex to streaming my Linux ISOs, rather then to use a paid service- THAT is the problem. And, that is why they can get my middle finger.
Maybe I’m wrong but isn’t there a drm free version of baldurs gate on GOG? Out of all the games to pirate this isn’t the one. I get that not everyone can afford it but I suspect a lot of people who do, can.
How is this being upvoted? Baldurs Gate 3 is a new release. In fact it’s so new that I think this is literally part of their marketing campaign, and good on them because the game looks amazing!
But the ecosystem for buying games without DRM is extremely limited.
… Buy them?
It will be a cold day in hell when I give Adobe $400 for a single version of photoshop and it still not work properly.
You cannot even pay $400 Adobe anymore. Now it’s only on subscription
I don’t play games and I don’t use expensive software (ok, beside Windows and Office). Mostly I don’t use my computer when I am not at work. I have other hobbies and I have enough of computer at work (I am a software developer). I only pirate movies and tv shows. I don’t even pirate music. I just use YouTube music, with turkish family account (it’s the cheapest, around 1,20€ - 1,80€ per month for 6 accounts). I was using Netflix, but since they started blocking account sharing I stopped using Netflix. It’s too pricey for how much I watch movies and tv shows. For Windows I usually download iso from microsoft, and find activator on mydigitallife forum. If I need to download some software (like Office for example) from some torrent tracker, I am lucky we have local private tracker that is known and used by whole country.
I don’t even use Microsoft Office anymore after the last Medusa bug in msdt that compromised computers without opening the virus files. LibreOffice ftw. I miss nothing. Much safer.
When I’m on Linux (most of the time), I’m using Libre Office, but sometimes I have to open some word document in Microsoft Office, because Libre Office don’t open it correctly.
All files open OK for me on libre office so far.
Also there’s office online, btw, for emergencies.
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I don’t know why, but I think calling people “pathetic cowardly whores” in this specific situation is hilarious.
What, exactly, does one have to do when moderating a torrent site to earn the title of “whore”?
If I were to wager a guess, empress is not a first language English speaker, and to her , it’s just a preferred general severe insult.
combined with her being completely unhinged lol
Naturally, haha
I’m gonna guess you’ve never played COD
Well, doing something “wrong” for money is basically the definition of a whore, so yeah it fits in this case if the alligations are correct.
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Seriously, wtf is going on here lol
I’m not arguing it’s wrong, but that’s just part of the classic definition.
I see Empress is still subtle and classy as always.
That post is a bit older IIRC, couple of months.
Someone posted it because of relevancy i guess. Your point might still stand, i haven’t heard anything about him.
Fuck Empress, however she’s right on this specific matter.
I guess if you lash out at absolutely everybody, eventually one of them will do something to deserve it.
What’s wrong with empress? I really don’t follow this stuff much.
That was one of the coolest reads ever! It reminded me of the podcast darknet diaries
This was written before her anti trans rant released with Hogwarts Legacy, too. Although I guess she had said some anti-trans stuff before that.
Wow, thanks for sharing this chunk of internet lore. I never torrented any games so I didn’t know there was so much more behind it than torrenting movies.
Thank you for that link. Haven’t been pirating for many years now (at least not to even remotely the same degree), so I knew nothing about all of this. But a very interesting read regardless
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I wouldn’t go that far, but he does make great indie music
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=KGAAhzreGWw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Ooh they didn’t like this one
Cool, then what will be the 1337x alternative?
I learned about https://torrentgalaxy.to/ recently. I’m not positive it’s a good alternative though.
I used TorrentGalaxy for a while before I found RARBG and private trackers. It is the best site if you want small WebRips, but it’s not the greatest for untouched Web-DL and Bluray remux.
I’m wondering if this one is good. It’s listed as a goat in the megathread tho
private trackers are the only truly safe option left
Out of the loop, private trackers?
Private sites that people upload torrents to. A lot of them have requirements like “upload at least 1 content that we don’t have” and “must maintain a seed ratio of x”. Most that I’ve seen either have closed registrations, requiring someone to invite you as a referral, or they have interviews to make sure you’re not malicious”.
I’ve always wanted to be in one because every once in a while I can’t find content that’s old/obscure and it’s super annoying and supposedly private trackers have a bunch of old/obscure content as-well as super new stuff like blu ray rips and native stream rips.
A lot of them have requirements like “upload at least 1 content that we don’t have” and “must maintain a seed ratio of x”.
I can attest to seeding requirements, but I’ve seen lots of private trackers, and only very few have rules like “upload at least 1 piece of content that we don’t have.” I would say those ones are in the minority, and most are happy to accept people who only download as long as they keep seeding and keep their ratios up.
I’ve always wanted to be in one because every once in a while I can’t find content that’s old/obscure and it’s super annoying and supposedly private trackers have a bunch of old/obscure content as-well as super new stuff like blu ray rips and native stream rips.
Depends on the tracker. Cinemageddon literally only traffics in B-movies and so the worse and more obscure the film is, the more likely it is you will find numerous copies on CG.
EDIT: I think it is amazing that I have 10 upvotes, and -1 downvotes, resulting in 11 upvotes.
invite only torrent sites.
reddit used to have its own private tracker, baconBits, spawned on christmas day 2009. It shut down May of last year.
there’s plenty of others, though.
The benefit of private trackers is that since they’re invite-only, you don’t really run the risk of running into copyright cops who want to send you cease and desist notices. They generally tend to go for the easy fish at the public trackers like 1337x and torrentgalaxy. There is a sort of “circle of trust” on private trackers and it can be really easy to get your account banned if someone you invite got banned. They take the circle of trust pretty seriously on a lot of them. (That sounds more scary than it is, I’ve never seen it in practice, but the general rule is “don’t invite people who will cause trouble, because you’ll be accountable for their behavior since you invited them.”)
Also, many private trackers have an upper limit on users, and stop accepting new users when they hit that limit. Keeping user bases small also keeps you more “under the radar.”
Finally, private trackers are also a source of many scene groups releases, so if you get on certain trackers, you’ll have faster access to certain releases.
I hate being that bitch but I gotta clear up:
“The benefit of private trackers” is what this poster meant.
Thanks, I put this comment up half asleep before work earlier. Corrections edited in.
I see your edit—I use Memmy and I used to be able to see separate downvotes and upvotes, but I cannot anymore. I miss that! Maybe it’s a setting somewhere. I didn’t downnvote ya and I’m sure everyone else didn’t because your comment was helpful and we could understand in context what ya meant ;3
I hope your helpful butt is already on all of the private trackers you desire to be on! I’m on a couple I love, but there’s always the white whales of trackers I can’t be assed to work my way up to hahaha
Invite only torrent sites.
Retention and availability of seeders is higher.
You have to seed each torrent for a certain period of time at minimum (usually a week or so) and maintain a good overall upload/download ratio total (1.0 +)
🌍👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Always has been
31337x?
At the risk of asking a stupid question: is there a viable alt?
Yes. Private trackers. Weird to see ppl in this thread go “what’s that?”
What’s that?
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Look for releases on the sites of the groups / ppl releasing them. Most offer trackers they seed to.
Other than that and private trackers, I like torrends.to to meta search for torrents, but there proceed with caution.
Oh didn’t know there was another meta search site like torrentz2. Thank you for the info!
I bet torrentleech will open for 1337x refugees
I’ve heard torrent leech has the same problem. The same guy uploaded it everywhere
If so, at least the admins arent affliated with it.
GGn too?
80085X
I e been using 8008135
nice
thepiratebay.org what else would it be? #sweden
Hmm I’ve heard that site nowadays is just the shadow of it’s former self.
I wouldn’t trust anything from a P2P site that purports to be:
- A cracked game / application for desktop and mobile platforms. Maybe it’s legit but assume it is malware.
- A serial number generator. If you absolutely must run one of these do it from a throwaway VM, or via WINE emulation to mitigate what it might do.
- An encrypted archive with a README. It’s a scam designed to make people sign up to other scams to release a non-existent password.
- A movie / audio with an extension such as .scr, .wma, .com, .exe etc. It’s malware.
Movies, audio & books are generally safe providing they use a recognized extension - mp3, mp4, pdf, mkv, aac, flac, epub etc. Stuff that runs under emulation like console games is generally safe. I say “generally” because an exploit could still be crafted to escape a popular media player or emulator and cause actual harm to your computer.
All the ads and 3rd party scripts should be considered malicious too and should be erased with an adblocker, or even better use Tor.
So basically use some common sense and if you really want some game or app, just buy the damned thing or wait for it to go on sale.
WINE is not safe to run malware in, it’s not a secure sandbox. AFAIK, anything expecting it can do anything a Linux binary can. (Also, not an emulator, it’s in the original name - WINE Is Not an Emulator)
I know what WINE is and the gist of “Wine is not an emulator”. I have used it extensively and for a while it even contained some of my code (not sure if it still does). But it is still emulating but not in the way people think. WINE is not emulating the operating system but it is emulating the interface that an executable interacts with Windows, aka the Win32 APIs and other DLLs.
They even touch on this in their FAQ - *That said, Wine can be thought of as a Windows emulator in much the same way that Windows Vista can be thought of as a Windows XP emulator: both allow you to run the same applications by translating system calls in much the same way. Setting Wine to mimic Windows XP is not much different from setting Vista to launch an application in XP compatibility mode. *
As far as a potentially malicious executable is concerned, you can create a throwaway wine folder to run the thing and delete it as soon as it is done, e.g.
e.g.
export WINEPREFIX=~/tmpwin winecfg # disable wininet from libraries tab, remove Z:, unlink all desktop integration folders wine keygen.exe # when done... rm -rf tmpwinIt doesn’t matter if keygen.exe is evil because it can write anything it likes to the fake C: and the fake registry and it’s blown away. As a precaution disable networking so it can’t reach out either. In the extremely unlikely event that keygen.exe had code to detect it was running under WINE, it would still be subject to the permissions of the uid you had run it as, so you could take even more precautions if you felt so inclined. You could even use a dockerized WINE if you felt like it.
On the topic of whether or not it’s an emulator, sounds like semantics in the end - fair enough, I disagree but you make a fair point.
That said, in terms of security I think it’s very important to point it out that it isn’t any more secure than running a random Linux executable. In my view, the original comment is advocating for running unknown executables under wine as a security measure, and the further argument is that it’s more secure because most attacks don’t target that.
Sounds like if people rely on that for security, malware will just start targeting that after people get used to assuming it’s safe.
I doubt many people are ever going to do what I suggested so the effort / payoff for malware writers makes it very unlikely they’d bother. They’ll just assume 99.999% of people running the binary are doing so on Windows and code accordingly. Of course anything is theoretically possible.
wine is a windows api implementation, it’s specifically NOT an emulator
Read their own FAQ. It’s not an emulator in the classic sense of emulating the OS. It is however emulating the API of Windows. I quoted the pertinent line of the FAQ elsewhere and made my point clearer
Not sure what the thumbs down is about. It’s right there in their own FAQ.
In fact it ends by saying - “Wine is not just an emulator” is more accurate.
There is a storied history in computing to use tongue in cheek self referential acronyms to denote some humor and finality in distinguishing things that purposely fill a niche in the world of competing, often pricey, commercial software and other hackable reasons.
So I bet you’re rubbing wrong those of us who remember that gnu is not unix, and more specifically wine is not an emulator. Because they really aren’t.
This is a piracy community.
-
You could trivially verify an emulated game with a checksum
-
If a game is released on GOG, there are Checksums that are hidden from the user. GOG games are DRM-free, so there’s no reason anyone would modify the installer.
-
Are cracked games no good anymore? You used to be able to get just about any cracked game back in the day. Sure, some of them might be malware, but it was easy to find one that wasn’t.
Empress, though an interesting individual herself, is at least correct this time.
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And then probably follows it up with denying the holocaust.
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What evidence has been found that links the crypto-mining wallets with the 1337X admins?
I think there’s been comments calling out the malware that have been deleted, possibly by the admins. In addition the infected torrentes stayed up for a long while (not sure if they still are or not)
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See my reply to Whiskey Pickle for the evidence.
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They admit the listing existed in that statement, and there are easily accessible records of 1337x mods defending the listing prior to its deletion (such as the comment I had also provided in my post). You may need to re-read it?
I can provide additional sources if necessary.
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You replied to this comment:
I think there’s been comments calling out the malware that have been deleted, possibly by the admins. In addition the infected torrentes stayed up for a long while (not sure if they still are or not)
… with this reply:
Haven’t seen any evidence of either of those things though…
Can you see how I would misunderstand what you were talking about here?
Literally nothing. This entire thing is one of the stupidest controversies that I’ve ever seen. One idiot made a wild accusation about the 1337 mods based on no evidence and apparently that was good enough for this community…we are better than this people, grow up.
See my reply to Whiskey Pickle for the evidence.
I read through the wayback link you had, but it really just sounds like admin are busy with their other lives and getting frustrated with new users spamming “trojan found” which is an extremely common thing to see from new users and they don’t have time to verify everything out there. Even saying it has “unpacker.exe” wouldn’t mean anything as the release was packed. Unless the wallet address can actually be tied to admin/mods, then that’s just heresay.
That VitaminX user sounds shady as all hell, but that doesn’t mean admin are doing backhanded deals with some users.
For those asking “private trackers what’s that?”
/r/trackers (on the bad site I know) has a lot of info
For those who may be interested in getting into private trackers, you should start with Myanonamouse.net in my opinion. They do an interview on the irc which is easy and you can join that way https://www.myanonamouse.net/inviteapp.php
It is a tracker for ebooks/audiobooks/comics that is easy to maintain a ratio on (via their generous bonus point system) as long as you are a decent seeder.
Once you’re on the site for a few months you can access the invite forum which can get you access to other private trackers. Think of it like a ladder.
Torrentleech (a general private tracker) occasionally has open signups throughout the year.
I’m on multiple private trackers, and they all hosted the infected version (they’ve been taken down now). Private doesn’t make it safe, especially when people are using automated tools to be the first to upload a torrent.
I didn’t say anything about that and don’t disagree but private trackers definitely have less of it due to their content having more scrutiny and standards.
Nothing is perfect. My comment only strived to let people know about private trackers as I saw multiple people ask about it.
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I’ve been on private trackers since demonid went down. Its the only way to sail, I’ve had zero issues and the content is heavily moderated for quality.
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No kidding. I pirate for the convenience of downloading whatever I want. I’m not interested in joining the cool kids club by trying to keep up with what’s freeleech and stress about how to maintain a ratio lest face their wrath.
I’ve never stressed over my ratio
Public trackers are great for when everything you’re looking for is common or freshly released/uploaded.
Ppl looking for niche content, it’s not gonna be on public trackers.
Also the main benefit of private vs Public is that you can find a 10-15 year old torrent of some niche content and it will still be actively seeded.
With public trackers, there is less retention of seeders, even more so for less common content.
Public trackers often end up with tons of dead torrents with 0-1 seeders after a couple years pass.
And on a private tracker there is incentive to keep old torrents alive. On public there is none. Ppl grab and run.
If you don’t mind me asking, do you think it would be possible to keep a an account on a few of these chillest private trackers without a seedbox? The main reason I’ve been avoiding private trackers for years now is that from the way people talk, those are a necessity.
Things get downloaded in an orderly manner and seeded forever(in a much slower rate that I’d like but), it’s just that Seedboxes are mostly a US and Europe run service and my country’s currency can’t handle that lol
some private trackers economies are easier than others and let you benefit off seed TIME rather than upload amount, so as long as you actively seed you still can gain points to gather buffer, etc. So yes it is possible.
Also depends on your internet speeds. I don’t use a seedbox and have done just fine, though I’ve had the luck of having had 300 mbps -> 500 mbps -> gigabit ethernet within the last 5 years.
Then that just means everything you’re looking for is common or freshly released/uploaded.
Ppl looking for niche content, it’s not gonna be on public trackers as often.
Also the main benefit of private vs Public is that you can find a 10-15 year old torrent of some niche content and it will still be actively seeded.
With public trackers, there is less retention of seeders, even more so for less common content.
Public trackers often end up with tons of dead torrents with 0-1 seeders after a couple years pass.
And on a private tracker there is incentive to keep old torrents alive. On public there is none. Ppl grab and run.
I like private trackers but they sometimes have arbitrary limitations on some clients and I don’t like that
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I know, I was referring to some limitations such as the Freebox torrent client which is embedded in routers made by a French ISP
The best way to get invites is to make friends with as many people on irc as possible
Thanks. Looks like the registration window is closed. I’ll check back soon!
I hate empress but even I have to agree sometimes.
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Don’t go too far now
At the risk of asking an incredibly stupid question, but if I only ever torrent video/audio, scan everything I download with defender, and only ever use a recently updated version of vlc, what’s the risk?
I remember getting viruses in ye olden days, but afaik the main problem is malware now.
Risk is practically nothing in your case, because you’re being careful, and know what you’re doing. You won’t run a binary when you were expecting the Barbie movie, for example.
If you were downloading binaries, then your risk is significant, but even then, unless you’re downloading new releases immediately, it’s likely that your antivirus will catch the new popular ransomware after a few days, when a few thousands of people have become infected. Governments won’t employ valuable zero-days on any rando who just wants to see their new isekai episode.
If you’re using Windows, just make sure file extensions are visible and that your file isn’t named Movie.mp4.exe
This is about a game, which is a .exe. In your case, it’s probably not an issue, but games will be. Pdfs also had an issue for a while, but I think that’s solved. As far as I’m aware, there aren’t any video/audio codec or VLC issues to be worried about though, so you should be good.
Movies and audio are very rarely infected, almost never. That depends on bugged software, so that you can be relatively safe of.
Executables… well… no anti virus can protect you in reality from dumb double-clicks. This is because viruses are trained against anti virus software until they can’t be recognized. There are mathematically an infinite number of patterns to run a program to trick all kinds of anti viruses. So in reality you can’t be safe. Once that’s done by an expert virus creator, the best you have to protect you is a behavioral detection of viruses, which may or may not work.
So, don’t rely on anti viruses. They barely protect you from script kiddies and legacy viruses.
why do you have to pirate VLC, just go to the website and download (or even compile from source)
He doesn’t pirate VLC, he pirates the audio/video he plays with it and asks if there is any danger in that.
Not what they’re asking, read closely. They’re curious about the risk from using pirated audio or video material (not executables). VLC is only mentioned as their player of choice, so it’s easy to assume they’ve already got it installed.
![ATTENTION: 1337X IS NO LONGER SAFE [Reposted from Reddit]](https://lm.madiator.cloud/pictrs/image/46fa2d88-10a1-4ec6-81ee-c487321a15e1.jpeg){kind=link}