game of thrones torrent download pirate ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 7 Was Pirated More Than One Billion Times. Game of Thrones managed to set three separate ratings record this past season with 10.1 million live viewers, 10.7 million and then a whopping 12.1 million for the season finale. These numbers were made even more impressive by the fact that two of season seven’s episodes were leaked online beforehand. Just think how high those numbers would have reached had viewers not illegally downloaded episodes countless installments. According to Torrent Freak, Game of Thrones was pirated more than one billion (with a b) times this year. “While it’s hard to measure piracy accurately, streaming in particular, piracy tracking outfit MUSO has just released some staggering numbers. According to the company, the latest season was pirated more than a billion times in total. To put this into perspective, this means that on average each episode was pirated 140 million times, compared to 32 million views through legal channels. The vast majority of the pirate ‘views’ came from streaming services (85%), followed by torrents (9%), and direct downloads (6%).” Per the site, the illegal streaming began with huge numbers—more than 90 million people torrented the season premiere—and continued to snowball from there. Season seven concluded more than a week ago and nine of the 15 most popular torrents on The Pirate Bay are Game of Thrones episodes. While it’s hard to translate all of the illegal downloads to viewers, we can safely assume GoT ‘s viewership numbers would have steadily risen had the Euron Greyjoy-like pirates not gotten their hands on the episodes. Game of Thrones Pirates Break BitTorrent Swarm Record. With a million downloads on BitTorrent in less than a day, the season premiere of Game of Thrones is breaking records on multiple fronts. Never before has there been a torrent with so many people sharing a file at the same time, more than 160,000 simultaneous peers. Data gathered by TorrentFreak further shows that Australia has the highest piracy rate of the popular download destinations, while London tops the list of pirate cities. As expected, the new season premiere of Game of Thrones has generated quite a bit of activity on various BitTorrent sites. Hundreds and thousands of downloaders went out to grab a copy of the show, breaking the record for the largest BitTorrent swarm ever in the process. A few hours after the first torrent of the show was uploaded the OpenBitTorrent tracker reported that 163,088 people where sharing one single torrent. 110,303 were sharing a complete copy of that particular torrent while 52,786 were still downloading. These are mind boggling numbers that we’ve never seen before. Previously the record for the largest BitTorrent swarm belonged to the season premiere of the TV-show “Heroes” with 144,663 peers. Counting all the different releases it’s estimated that the latest Game of Thrones episode has been downloaded over a million times already. Considering the above there is little doubt that Game of Thrones will once again be crowned the most downloaded TV-show of the year. So who are these people, and why are they pirating Game of Thrones? One of the reasons cited for the popularity among pirates is the international delay in airing. Outside the U.S. fans of the show sometimes have to wait a while before they can see the latest episode. HBO is trying to close these release gaps as best it can, but for some fans a few hours is already too much. Delays are just part of the problem though. The fact that the show is only available to those who pay for an HBO subscription doesn’t help either. This explains why many people from the U.S. prefer to use BitTorrent. To get an indication of where these Game of Thrones fans can be found we took a closer look at their download locations. The U.S. comes out on top, followed by the UK and Australia. The number three spot for Australia is impressive and with a population of just over 22 million people it has the highest piracy rate. Looking at other cities we see that most downloads come from London, before Paris and Sydney. But according to HBO, piracy isn’t killing the show, quite the contrary. While HBO would prefer it if everyone paid for Game of Thrones, their programming president Michael Lombardo doesn’t fear piracy. He sees it as a compliment and doesn’t believe it negatively impacts DVD-sales. Game of Thrones Most Popular TV Show to Push ‘Pirate’ Malware. Game of Thrones is widely known as the most pirated TV-show in history. That's quite an achievement, but one that comes with a downside for the unauthorized audience. Research from Kaspersky reveals that the popular TV-show is also used by scammers as a prime payload for malware. In recent years copyright holders have been rather concerned with the health of pirates’ computers. They regularly highlight reports which show that pirate sites are rife with malware and even alert potential pirates-to-be about the dangers of these sites. While some of these claims are exaggerated, there is no denying that malware is spread through pirate sites. On torrent sites, this is usually done in the form of fake releases uploaded by malware peddlers, who disguise themselves as legitimate uploaders. While the .torrent files and the sites are not the problem, the actual downloads can include all sorts of nastiness. This problem isn’t new. We have highlighted it repeatedly over the years, going back more than a decade in some cases. Although it’s been hard to quantify the problem, a new report from Kaspersky Lab adds some intriguing context to the phenomenon. The cybersecurity company and anti-virus provider decided to take a closer look at how scammers use popular TV shows to lure victims. Are some shows more frequently used than others, for example, and which ones are most successful in delivering their payload? “Our goal was to see which TV series were the most popular with the malware pushers and to take a closer look at what kind of threats are distributed that way,” Kaspersky writes. The research provides a snapshot of how malware spreads through downloads of 31 popular TV shows. Kaspersky ran these titles against its in- house database of malware encounters, to see how often the TV-shows were linked to malware. The results show that last year, 126,340 users were attacked by malicious payloads that could be linked to (fake) pirated copies of popular TV- shows. The total number of recorded attacks among all users was 451,636. That translates to little under 1,000 malware attacks per day. The 2018 numbers are a significant decrease compared to the year before when 188,769 users were attacked. According to Kaspersky, this drop is in line with a decrease in the overall prevalence of malware attacks in other areas. Torrent sites are losing traffic slowly as well, which may play a role too. While the number of malware attacks linked to popular TV-shows is sizable, it’s worth keeping in mind that these originate from uploads by scammers. These uploads are usually swiftly removed from well-moderated torrent sites but can clearly survive longer on other indexes. Looking at the individual show titles, Kaspersky found that Game of Thrones accounted for 17% of all user attacks in the sample. This is quite an achievement since there were no new episodes released in 2018. The number of total attacks and unique malware samples were also the highest for Game of Thrones. “Of all the TV series analyzed, Game of Thrones had the greatest number of users attacked by malware of the same name – 20,934. It tried to infect users 129,819 times, and the total number of Game of Thrones-themed malware files in our threat collection is 9,986. “This makes the show an unmatched leader in popularity not just among users but also among cybercriminals looking for the most effective way to distribute malware,” Kaspersky adds. Top 10 TV shows used as a disguise for malware in 2018 (credit Kaspersky) The list of top 10 most popular ‘malware’ TV shows is completed by other popular titles such as The Walking Dead, Arrow, and Suits. These are familiar names in our yearly list of most pirated TV-shows, which makes sense, as scammers seek out the most sought after releases. A more detailed look at the episodes within a season further shows that the premiere and season finale are the most likely to be infected. As such, they also target the most users. “The common theme we were able to spot was that the first and last episodes were used as a disguise for malware each season. Also, the titles of the opening and closing episodes of each season were used the most actively to hide malware compared to other episodes,” Kaspersky writes. GoT: number of infected files and unique users attacked in seasons 1, 6 and 7 (credit Kaspersky) While Game of Thrones is the uncrowned king of torrent related malware, American Horror Story also deserves a mention. Of all the researched TV-shows, this show was the most effective, as it hit an average of three users per infected release. Finally, Kaspersky reports that “Not-a-virus:Downloader” and “Not-a-virus:AdWare” are the most common threats which are shared TV show content. The most popular ‘dangerous’ malware was the Trojan category.