Malicious BitTorrent Clients: Torrent101 & Bitroll
Torrent101 and Bitroll are two relatively new BitTorrent clients that can seriously damage your computer. The worst thing about it is that popular sites like Torrentspy, Torrentscan, and even The Pirate Bay display ads for them.
Both clients are scam products that claim to bring you ‘high speeds downloads’, but all they do is install malware, and hijack your browser. We already posted about Bitroll a while ago, and if you take a look at the comments on that post you will see that these clients bring nothing but bad things.
Even worse is the fact that they advertise these malware clients on several torrent sites, using phrases like “Download Torrents using Torrent101 for high speed downloads”. Torrentspy and Torrentscan are two reputable sites that knowingly advertise for these clients. They go so far as to integrate the ads into their design. Experienced BitTorrent users will probably not fall into this trap, but I bet many newcomers will.
You might wonder why respectable BitTorrent site admins advertise for these clients. Well the answer to that is simple: MONEY. The developers pay a lot of cash to these admins, who get paid for installing malware on their turn.
The ads also appear on The Pirate Bay and several other sites through contextual ad-services like Adbrite and Targetpoint (screenshot). They they tried to get on mininova as well, but the site admins rejected the ad proposal on Adbrite, and blocked ads from these malicious clients via Targetpoint.
Another site that was recently infected is Snarf-it. One of the junior admins accidentally made a deal with Torrent101, something that goes completely against the ‘safe ads’ policy of one of the cleanest BitTorrent sites on the net. The contract was canceled as soon as possible, and Rafe, the site admin later apologized for the mistake.
So watch out! And avoid these malicious clients.
