Don't pirate the Super Mario Bros movie - it's probably just malware

Sead Fadilpašić
·2 min read
Mario, Peach, and Toad look out onto the horizon in The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Mario, Peach, and Toad look out onto the horizon in The Super Mario Bros. Movie
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You shouldn’t be pirating the new Super Mario Bros movie, not just because it’s illegal and morally wrong, but also because you could infect your PC with a trojan.

Cybersecurity researchers from Reason Labs claim to have found multiple trojans, pretending to be an HD version of the new hit movie, which hijack the victim’s browser, its search engine page, and steal sensitive data from the infected endpoints.

The trojans haven’t been named anything particular, but the researchers say they bring material gain to the attackers. If a victim installs the malware, their default search engine changes, so when they type a query in the browser, they get taken to a different website and are probably served ads, which the attackers profit from.

Millions of victims

The researchers said these trojans also steal sensitive information from the compromised devices, but did not elaborate exactly how that process goes, where the C2 servers are, or how the data is sent and exfiltrated.

Reason Labs says that so far, more than 150,000 of its customers reported being targeted with these trojans. Hence, the researchers concluded that the number of potential victims is probably in the millions, if we account for countless consumers who are not Reason Labs customers.

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They did not say where the malicious files are hosted, if they’re being distributed via torrents, or in a different method. So far, you can spot them through their file names, which are “the super mario bros moviehd.exe”, and “the super mario bros moviecam.exe”.

Cybercriminals are known for taking advantage of trending events to further their nefarious goals. The World Cup, the Olympic Games, Superbowl, the Covid-19 pandemic, those are just some of the global events that they’ve used to try and distribute malware among people. In this particular case, the best way to protect your devices is to make sure to access content from legitimate sources, only.