But not all firms are as diligent in protecting their intellectual property, he says. The company swiftly reports the illicit content and YouTube is responsive in taking it down. (See BOTNET ALERT: Are You Vulnerable?)Īn acquaintance of mine who works for a software development company says that keygen videos targeting the company’s products pop up daily on YouTube. The most likely outcome of clicking that link is that you'll get a nasty malware infection, or become ensnared in a botnet. It's like playing Russian Roulette, only the odds are a lot worse. On the keygen video page, you'll find a link to download the actual keygen program. (There are even libraries of tunes known as ' keygen music' or 'chiptunes' for the convenience of miscreants who post these links.) The video portion is usually of low production value, and the “music” that accompanies many keygens is ripped from 1970s video games. Keygen videos provide entertainment bait as well as the promise of free software. Many pirates are also music and video junkies. (It’s safe to go and look, but don’t download anything if you wish to avoid a malware infection or a warning from your ISP.) But malware distributors are also using YouTube to spread their poisoned programs. If you visit The Pirate Bay Bittorrent mega-site and search for the word, “keygen,” you’ll be rewarded with many hits.

The small keygen packages are often spread more widely and quickly than gigabyte-sized packages containing pre-cracked software. A few dozen kilobytes of code are ample for these simple tasks. All they need to do is prompt the user for the same registration data that the software does and then use the same algorithm that the software uses to generate a license key. Programs that generate illicit license keys are called “key generators” or “keygens” for short. What pirates often want is a license key that transforms a trial version into a full-featured version that never expires. Trial versions of programs are available from the developers’ sites. But why bother uploading hundreds of megabytes to various sites, or making such a large package available to downloaders, when a small file of a few thousand bytes will catch just as many fish? Sure, you could plant a virus or Trojan in a complete software package. One of the favorite traps set for pirates is the key generator. That’s why malware distributors love to target people who steal software, music, movies, games, and other intellectual property.

“You can’t cheat an honest man” is an old proverb, and it has its complement: it’s pretty easy to cheat dishonest people.

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